


Exobiology for the Caffeine-Deprived

by Inisheer



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, medical AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-27 15:40:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 35,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12585120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inisheer/pseuds/Inisheer
Summary: Maggie Sawyer does *not* have a crush on Alex Danvers, a coffee addiction, or a habit of running away from her problems, thank you very much.The hospital AU exactly one person asked for. And that person was me.





	1. June: The Coluvian's Gills

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I aim to be no less accurate in my depiction of biology and medicine than Supergirl itself. If you work in the medical professions, I apologise for any misrepresentation of your life, career, attitude or ethics. Though not enough to take it back.
> 
> The reference point for my knowledge of American teaching hospitals is that 1. Scrubs is the first show I ever watched all the way through, 2. That's it.
> 
> Finally, I am deeply and truly sorry for submitting this two weeks late.

People asked Maggie if it was hard treating _aliens_ , as if they were a group, like _toddlers_ or _exophobic assholes._ She’d been known to laugh at the question. They had no idea.

Under the sweeping light-wood beams and sparkling windows bestowed by the hospital’s most recent renovation, as you entered the ICU by the desk, their patients were divided roughly into two batches. The humans, who made up the majority and sometimes spilled over, took up the right-hand side. Their wifi-linked beds, digital charts, and even their urinary catheters were the newest and shiniest insurance companies could be convinced to pay for. No expense need be spared.

The rest were corralled into the left-hand corner Maggie approached now. Monitors blinked or beeped gently at her as she passed them. Many were makeshift, rigged up after-hours by Winn Schott or others good with electronics to make up for the shortage of specialist equipment. This part of the ICU was no less squeaky clean than the rest, and if the sunlight didn’t reach it until evening, that was mere architectural misfortune, but –

Aliens. Which aliens? Maggie asked, when she didn’t laugh. There were dozens of alien species on Earth, and looking like humans at the skin didn’t mean they were anything alike underneath. Pretty much every new species Maggie had encountered had meant dealing with an entirely new physiology – unknown metabolism – cells that simply didn’t function like the cells in their biology textbooks – and nearly all of them between here and Denver, when they were sick, came to NC Central.

Even if working cardiac monitors for them were a lower budget priority than refitting the Chief of Medicine’s office.

Maggie reached the end of the row, lifted a chart, and nodded to the green-skinned, scaly individual in the bed. ‘Morning, Mr Fisher.’

All Coluvians, when they landed on Earth, were assigned the surname “Fisher”. Their embassy people seemed to think it was funny. The hospital had by now treated over a hundred of them. The admin staff did not think it was funny.

‘Morning, Doctor.’ His words came out in a wheeze.

‘Big day today,’ said Maggie, checking a couple of instruments. ‘How’re you feeling?’

‘For someone who’s…’ He trailed off, head-frills fluttering in either pain or frustration, and reached for the tablet at his bedside. Tapping out words was a slow business with clumsy webbed hands. Maggie knew his daughter, when she visited, would sit and wait patiently while he unspooled long sentences in faltering one-fingered strings; but hospital staff didn’t have the time. Mr Fisher typed her a single word.

N-e-r-v-o-u-s.

Maggie leaned in to inspect the black growth on his gills. No change. ‘I know. And I won’t lie to you, it’s a delicate procedure you’re gonna undergo. But you’re in very good hands.’ His mouth twisted in pained imitation of a smile. Maggie was more reassured by the blue sparking through his settled frills. ‘Now let me just take your blood pressure…’ She wrapped the band around his arm and coaxed the machine through its usual complaints before it spat out four numbers: four beats in rhythm for two hearts. ‘That looks perfect.’

A-s t-h-e s-u-n s-e-t-t-i-n-g o-v-e-r C-o-l-u.

‘Don’t. You’ll make me cry,’ said Maggie. Mr Fisher’s head-frills darkened to a deeper blue. Amusement. Hard to get to know someone when you couldn’t hold a conversation, but Maggie liked him: she thought he was one of those patients she’d have stopped and chatted with, if she’d had the time or he the ability to talk. She knew what had happened to the sunsets on Colu. Maggie smiled back and promised to visit once he was out of surgery before taking her leave.

The ICU was still early-morning quiet. Nobody had coded yet. Later, once the day began properly, the apparently calm space would morph into an arena of bustle and chaos, but for now only a few nurses and orderlies scurried from patient to patient, and Maggie could drink her second coffee of the morning secure in the hope nobody would try to die on her before she finished it. Anyway – she had an excuse to skip the worst of it, this morning.

She found Alex Danvers at the central desk. Less of a surprise than it should have been, given Danvers lived (truly, Maggie sometimes thought, _lived_ ) down in surgery. It _was_ a surprise to see her scanning through a list Maggie couldn’t recall leaving out, but must have, for Danvers to be reading it.

‘Don’t you have somewhere to be?’ said Maggie.

Alex Danvers pushed a mug towards her. ‘I brought you coffee, too.’

‘Black? No sugar?’

‘Yes, you weirdo.’

Maggie accepted the mug (“Trust Me, I’m A Doctor”). The coffee was borderline scalding. Just as she liked it.

Danvers gestured to the list. ‘So you’ve got Kara.’

‘Uh, yeah.’

Orientation. How quickly it came around. At ten today Maggie would be leaving to introduce herself to the half-dozen members of this year’s fresh batch of interns she’d be personally keeping an eye on. Then tomorrow they would stumble in, doe-eyed and wearing brand-new scrubs, to wreak havoc, and it would be part of Maggie’s job to prevent it. Which she was totally ready for and not stressing out about at all.

When had Danvers mentioned her little sister would be doing her internship at Central? It must have been a while back – long enough for Maggie to have forgotten until she saw the name on the list when it showed up in her inbox last night. And what of it? Maggie didn’t know a great deal about Danvers’s sister. She’d known she had one but frankly, she’d thought the sister’s name was Kiera.

There was an opportunity, perhaps. ‘What’s she like? She much like you?’

‘No,’ said Danvers quietly. ‘Nothing like me.’

‘You’re both doctors.’

‘Yeah, there’s that.’ A flash of something passed across her face, then she shook her head, pushing it away, and said more brightly, ‘But she went medical, not surgical. I’m too much to live up to, obviously.’

‘How do you fit your head into your scrubs?’ said Maggie. Alex Danvers sipped her coffee as if that would hide her grin.

Maggie couldn’t help hoping Kara _was_ different. It wouldn’t be the same dynamic, obviously, but she and Danvers hadn’t gotten along particularly well as new interns – and much as Maggie liked her well enough now, _two_ of her might be more than the hospital could handle.

She checked out across the ICU again that everything was calm. The desk provided a wonderful vantage point. Award-winning architects had their merits, even if – in a blissful haze of curvilinear walls and skylights – they’d forgotten to include enough wall sockets.

‘Are you looking forward to caring for the ducklings?’ asked Danvers. When Maggie didn’t reply immediately, she added, ‘Sawyer?’

Maggie chuckled. ‘Bit nervous,’ she admitted. It was amazing how much you could fit into that one word.

‘Really? Why?’

Because she was in charge of hapless baby interns – not _properly_ in charge, of course, that was Dr Grant – but in charge enough. Enough to be responsible for their screw-ups and for teaching them what to do. Which was going to be a tall order, because off the top of her head Maggie couldn’t think of anything she actually knew, or knew how to do, including possibly keeping track of the notes she’d prepared (no, other pocket) or demonstrating how to use a pager without beeping half the hospital and why did they still have pagers, anyway? And how could she explain any of that to Alex Danvers, who walked through the world with an irrepressible air not only of knowing exactly what she was doing, but of believing she did?

Maggie spread her hands. ‘What if they cry?’

‘Sawyer, you’re awesome with crying people.’ Danvers considered, then added, ‘And it’s a _when_ , not an _if._ ’

‘Great.’ Maggie puffed out her cheeks and breathed out slowly. ‘What about you? Are you nervous?’

Danvers looked lost. ‘About what?’

‘Oh, the delicate and complex surgery Dr J’onzz has you up for later today…’ said Maggie.

‘Pfft,’ said Danvers. That was it – _pfft –_ full of careless scorn and blowing a strand of hair out of her face. ‘Piece of cake.’

She finished her coffee not long after and claimed Maggie’s empty mug along with her own (“Best Big Sister”). ‘Gotta run.’

‘See you later.’

‘Say hi to Kara for me,’ Danvers said, in parting. Maggie watched her go. Scrubs were hardly flattering on anyone, but –

The rest of the morning was typical, even as Maggie grew more jittery about her impending introductions. One patient threw a tantrum because he disliked the food. Only one person coded, though he did so multiple times, under Dr M’orzz’s gritted mutterings that she would not let him die no matter how determined he was.

A transplant patient, newly arrived on the ward, threatened lawsuits at not being offered a private room, while the Gevan in the bed next to her calmly continued to read the newspaper. When Maggie approached from Mr Fisher’s corner, she narrowed her eyes.

‘You one of them? No offence, but I don’t want to be treated by an – off-worlder.’

Maggie wondered what she would have said about being treated by a gay doctor. Maybe not now – ten years ago, twenty? A black doctor? A Jewish one? ‘I’m human, ma’am. You can see my karyotype if you like.’

The patient looked mollified. Or with any luck Maggie had stymied her with “karyotype”.

‘Why do you work with moonlings, then?’

She got that a lot, and not just from people who’d listened to her rant about how unreasonably hard it was. M’gann – Dr M’orzz – was the only other specialist in alien medicine, and of course she was Martian herself. Dr J’onzz and Danvers over in surgery, same deal: one off-world, one human. Maggie knew her own reasons. She didn’t know Danvers’. Probably she just liked the challenge.

She bit back a sharp answer in favour of, ‘Why not?’

The biggest drama of the morning was a narrowly-averted shouting match between Dr Grant and the guy who kept turfing people over from oncology. Maggie, with a range of bodily fluids spattering her scrubs and the transplant patient’s words still ringing in her ears, was tempted to let Dr Grant have at him. But they were overstretched in oncology too.

Almost ten. Maggie paused at the desk to grab her copy of the roster and a swig of Winn’s coffee, almost gagging at the taste. Why did the whole world think milk went in coffee?

‘Hey!’

‘Sorry. Need caffeine.’

Winn seemed to realise. ‘You’re off to meet the interns? Good luck.’ He held his hand out to offer Maggie a fist-bump.

‘Come on, man.’ Then Maggie relented, and touched her fist to Winn’s. James, beside him, nodded at her. Right. The notes were still in her pocket. Time to go.

 

*

 

The initial part of orientation had been held in the same room as Maggie’s, years ago, and when she arrived they were just starting to spill out. She picked her own interns out from the crowd, double-checked her headcount, and led her little gaggle into a too-small office where only Maggie had a seat. The interns stood in a crushed half-circle, looking down at Maggie. She started to regret sitting down.

She wouldn’t have known Kara Danvers by sight. At first glance she was nothing like the older Danvers at all, except for being a doctor, and taller than Maggie. Blonde and built like a professional tennis player, Kara also looked like one of the interns less likely to suffer a breakdown in the middle of rounds, but with an easy smile and a certain diffidence – no, nothing like a certain over-achieving surgical resident. And she’d caught her sleeve on the door handle on the way in.

When Maggie introduced herself, Kara beamed. ‘My sister’s mentioned you.’

‘She did what?’ Maggie blurted out. Then, recovering herself, said, ‘You mean – to look out for?’

Kara shrugged. ‘Sure. And work stories and stuff.’

Maggie let it drop. Alex Danvers’ name came up every so often in her own stories. Nothing interesting in that. Also, not the time.

Her phone buzzed. Frowning, Maggie held up a hand. ‘Excuse me. I need to check this isn’t an emergency.’ She fished the phone out and almost dropped it. Not an emergency. But the name shining on the screen was one Maggie hadn’t seen in – a while.

‘Are you all right, Dr Sawyer?’

Maggie nodded faintly at Kara and shoved the phone away. ‘Yeah. Okay. Right.’

She handed out the manuals first, since they provided a useful platform for all the other sheets of paper: IT use declarations and locker registration forms and a copy of the fire safety regulations, which Maggie remembered she was supposed to go through point-by-point, paying particular focus to the toaster ban. Then came the pagers. Her interns looked at them suspiciously; Maggie almost expected someone to start shaking and listen for a rattling sound. But she managed the demonstration without paging half the hospital, and she was almost starting to think she wouldn’t screw this up.

‘Any questions?’

A blonde girl raised a quivering hand. ‘Is it true Dr Grant is really mean?’

‘No.’ Maggie shook her head. ‘It’s true she’s a hard-ass and she’ll probably make you cry, and I don’t recommend bothering her if you can help it, but she’s one of the good ones. Her heart’s in the right place. It’s just buried under ten layers of cynicism and insults.’

‘Oh.’ The girl didn’t look reassured. Maggie leaned forward.

‘I mean it – Dr Grant’s not the one you should be worried about. What you really need to remember, and I’m super serious about this, is – _do not cross paths with Dr Luthor._ ’

A few furrowed brows greeted this announcement. Not Kara’s. No, Kara would know better. But the rest –

‘Oh, I see. You met her already, didn’t you? She seemed nice. Friendly. Right? Well, I’ve seen her true colours, and everyone in this hospital will tell you the same, and _you_ are fresh meat. For your own safety, stay as far away from Dr Luthor as possible. Got it?’

They nodded in unconvinced assent.

The rest of their questions were less heavy, though numerous. The knot in Maggie’s chest tightened again as she stumbled through them, sometimes barely managing not to laugh bitterly at their naivety, sometimes stumped. Who was she to tell these kids what to do? She’d been an intern herself a couple of years ago.

When they’d run out of little worries, Maggie took a breath, and gave them the usual spiel about showing up on time. ‘Now you’ve got two hours with the man from legal, starting in – ten minutes – it’s up on the third floor. Make sure to at least look like you’re paying attention. And I expect you all to get a good night’s sleep and show up on time tomorrow.’

She waved them out. To Kara, last to go, she remembered – ‘Alex says hi.’

‘Say hi back for me.’

‘Will do,’ said Maggie, dropping her head into her hands as the door closed. That could have been worse. She thought about the phone, decided against it, shook herself, and checked her pager instead.

 

*

 

Mid-afternoon she found herself staring at a page of nonsense numbers, tempted to see if turning them upside down would squeeze any clarity out of them. By all accounts, it didn’t make sense.

Mr Fisher lay stretched-out on the bed in front of Maggie, now in his own little room. The surgery had gone well. (Alex Danvers would be preening, naturally.) He was under full sedation, but that had always been part of the plan. His gills were still very fragile, and the team wanted to monitor their function without any extra stresses – like talking or moving – before bringing him out, hopefully this evening. The Coluvian’s frills lay flat, translucent and almost colourless beyond a pale green tinge. On his face, too, his skin was a lighter green than before. In many species that would have meant sickliness; in his it was a sign of health. The surgical team had removed the necrosis in the gills without any apparent problems.

So why the hell was his blood pressure so low?

Was it a sign of infection? Maggie tried taking another blood pressure reading. This time, the machine whined at her and gave her gibberish. If his diastolic pressure had been that low, he’d be in a coma. Maggie pulled out her stethoscope to check his hearts. That was – interesting. Maggie didn’t think she’d even _heard_ an irregular heartbeat in a Coluvian before. It was critical for their two hearts to remain in sync with each other. From what she could tell, they were: the late beats were shared between both hearts. But there were late beats. Maggie didn’t think that was good.

‘How’s he doing?’

Maggie hadn’t heard Danvers approach. She was used to it. Alex Danvers could move unnervingly quietly. She often showed up to check on patients after their surgery. ‘Not good. Take a look at the chart.’ Maggie waved vaguely, shifting the chestpiece over to check the left heart again.

‘Huh.’

At the edge of her vision, Maggie saw Danvers lift the chart and pull it out of sight. She moved the stethoscope down Mr Fisher’s chest to listen to his lungs. They sounded fine. Maggie sighed and pulled the tips from her ears.

‘Your sister says hi, by the way.’ Straightening up, Maggie watched Alex Danvers run her fingers across the blood pressure readings. She was biting her lip. ‘Dr Danvers?’

‘What the hell’s happened to him?’

‘What is it, my fault?’ said Maggie, folding her arms.

‘I didn’t say –’ Danvers snapped, then huffed. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong. I’m saying _something’s_ wrong.’

‘Yeah. I know.’ Maggie proceeded to quickly explain what she’d heard in his chest while Danvers leaned over to look at the gills. The area around them was dark. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think he’s got an infection.’

‘That shouldn’t be causing it. Not in a Coluvian.’

‘Yeah. And what about the O2 levels?’ said Alex. ‘That’s lower than it should be.’

Maggie grimaced. ‘Not really. It’s within the tolerable range.’

‘But lower than predicted.’

She was getting sharp again. Maggie forced herself to remain calm. If she’d done something to set Danvers on edge, she’d know about it, and apart from that Alex’s issues were her own. ‘Right, well, how accurate are our predictions?’ M’gann had worked with plenty of Coluvians before, and they had good data on the species – medicine on Colu had been well-developed before the whole waste-and-destruction thing – but partial gill removal wasn’t a procedure they’d done many times here. Lots of things might affect their function afterwards, and they had no way of measuring more than a fraction of them.

‘I made those predictions,’ Danvers muttered.

‘The O2 saturation will rise once his gills heal a bit more,’ said Maggie, ignoring that.

‘Except it’s not. It’s trending downwards.’ Maggie found the chart shoved under her nose, and – looking closely at that set of numbers for the first time – realised Danvers was right. ‘Sawyer. He needs the false lung.’

‘How like a surgeon. First instinct is to cut the poor guy open,’ Maggie teased. ‘Hoping to keep up your perfect streak?’

Danvers’ eyes darkened. ‘No. As it happens, I don’t want to put anybody on the operating table unless necessary. I’d have thought you’d know that by now.’

‘Okay. Sorry.’ Maggie had no idea which nerve she’d just hit, but – what was with her this afternoon? Of course she knew that. It was a joke. A bad one, but one Danvers had always appreciated before. ‘You okay?’

‘I’m fine. And I’m right.’

‘It’s only two hours since he cleared surgery. I don’t think we should –’ Maggie broke off as M’gann M’orzz slipped into the room. She looked between them, eyebrows raised.

They took it in turns to explain. ‘And that’s why he needs to go back in to get the false lung fitted,’ Danvers said, in conclusion.

‘Which would be _very risky_ ,’ Maggie added. Danvers made a face at her.

M’gann didn’t seem to have noticed; she nodded thoughtfully at Maggie’s final comment. ‘I agree with Dr Sawyer. I’d rather avoid another surgery at this point. Coluvians aren’t exactly robust in land-based environments.’

‘If we can’t get the oxygen levels under control, it’s a risk we’ll have to take.’

Way to state the obvious. ‘But not _yet_ ,’ said Maggie.

M’gann waved them aside and headed forward to inspect Mr Fisher herself. ‘Stop it, both of you. You shouldn’t be sniping at each other over a patient, even an unconscious one.’

Maggie glanced at Alex Danvers and, catching her doing the same, mouthed _sorry._ Danvers shook her head. _Doesn’t matter._

She could see what M’gann must see, suddenly: a pair of senior residents bickering like interns. Maggie was supposed to be the one keeping the interns on track. But Danvers had always had a knack for getting under her skin, and – what the hell had gotten under _hers_?

‘Is this thing broken?’ asked M’gann, indicating the blood pressure band.

‘It’s not broken,’ said Danvers, a touch defensively – she’d designed it – ‘Might not be able to give accurate readings if his heartbeats are irregular.’

M’gann dug out an old sphygmomanometer and went to take the readings manually, working out the pressure in pencil on the back of Mr Fisher’s chart.

‘Do you know what’s going on?’

‘I know these symptoms don’t match any disease known to infect Coluvians,’ said M’gann, rubbing her eyes.

That happened sometimes. Bacteria were usually well-behaved, but viruses could cross species barriers – even interplanetary ones – in unpredictable ways. It never ended in a quiet week for the hospital.

‘Have you seen anyone else like this?’

‘No.’ Danvers was shaking her head too.

‘How long?’

Maggie thought. ‘I looked in right after he came out of surgery. His pulse was definitely normal then. Bit less discolouration round the gills, actually. More everywhere else, but that would be the anaesthetic…’ She motioned towards the chart. Everything else was on there. The nurses had been looking in through the last couple of hours.

‘Okay,’ said M’gann. ‘We’ll keep him under close observation for now and maintain the sedation overnight. Maggie, I’d like you to run full bloods, kidney function, thyroid, primary lamellae, and see if you can’t get an ECG to work on him for once. Got it?’

Great. Taking blood samples from patients with scales was just how Maggie wanted to spend her afternoon. Sometimes she had dreams about working in a fully-equipped unit.

‘Dr Danvers, while you’re here, can you run some files over to Dr J’onzz for me?’

It was oddly quiet once Alex Danvers had gone.

 

*

 

Maggie’s day drew to a close talking a soon-to-be-discharged Starhavenite patient through insurance documents on her iPad. Though it was still bright outside, the high windows grew shaded early in the evening to give the impression of twilight. The ICU seemed easiest then, removed of its stark whiteness, but not so dark the shadows felt dangerous. Winn was still hard at work setting up IVs for the night.

Maggie checked in on Mr Fisher on her way out. She’d had no luck with the ECG – the scales were intractable – and still had to check his hearts’ rhythm manually. No better. Not significantly worse. With the necrosis gone from his gills, his breathing no longer had the wheeze she’d so long associated with him, and Maggie found herself watching the rise and fall of his chest like she sometimes had, as a child, when their dogs or her grandmother were sleeping with unsettling stillness.

She turned the light off before she left.

Her route out, via a minor detour, took Maggie to the break room. She found James polishing one of his camera lenses on the couch. He raised an eyebrow at Maggie’s beeline towards the coffeemaker. ‘You know, as a doctor…’

‘I’m professionally bound to have a caffeine addiction?’ said Maggie.

She made her coffee extra-strong. So what? It was only her fifth cup of the day. It needed to be powerful enough to get her through all her evening errands and chores. James showed her some of his photos while she gulped down the coffee.

‘What do you think of the new interns?’

‘They’ll shape up.’

Maggie swung her bag over her shoulder, waved farewell to James, headed out and froze.

Emily. Emily was here. In the hospital. Talking to – Alex Danvers, of all people.

They were walking towards the break room. In the time it had taken Maggie’s blood to turn to ice, she’d been seen and waved to. No chance to hide. There was nothing for it but to grit it out. Oh, hell, what did she do now? Nod awkwardly? Go in for a handshake? Steel herself to be slapped? What was Emily going to say?

Whatever Maggie had been expecting from the first meeting with her ex-girlfriend since Emily stormed out of their shared flat in tears, it wasn’t a hug.

‘Um.’

Emily pulled back quickly, looking just as weirded out as Maggie felt. (Danvers, bless her, picked this moment to stop three paces back and check her phone.) ‘Um,’ Emily echoed. Recovering quickly, she continued with impressive brightness: ‘Mags! How are you?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘I’m glad. It’s good to see you.’

Really? ‘Uh, yeah. You too.’

‘Did you get my messages? I’m in town until Sunday. We should meet up sometime. Um, talk, maybe.’

‘Maybe,’ said Maggie. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get going…’

‘Yeah. Yeah, of course,’ said Emily. ‘Alex has been telling me how busy they keep you guys around here. See you later.’

‘Later,’ said Maggie, automatically. Her feet moved too – automatically – a fraction too quickly down the corridor. Behind her, Maggie heard Emily say hi to James. Okay. She passed through the main doors and flinched to meet broad daylight outside. Shaking herself, Maggie headed towards the bikes, where the shrubbery would offer her some cover and she could lean against the wall, hands shaking, wondering how much of her racing heartbeat was a caffeine spike and how much shock. She closed her eyes.

That was what she’d get for not reading her texts.

Emily was here. And she wasn’t mad. Or she might have been pretending, for Danvers’ sake and James’, but – keeping a civil tongue didn’t have to mean lunch invites – or was it a trap –

‘How’s it going?’

Maggie jumped. Damn the woman – had she been a spy in another life? ‘You almost gave me a heart attack, Danvers,’ she said, standing up. Where Maggie had only thrown a jacket on over her scrubs (laziness being a factor in favour of public transport), Danvers had changed into full riding gear. It was a good look.

She ruined it by saying, ‘You’re in the right place for it.’

‘Ha, ha.’

Danvers seemed hesitant. She fiddled with the strap of her helmet, and Maggie tilted her head, trying to guess what was coming next.

‘Look, I don’t know what went down with you guys, but – talking with Emily might not be the worst idea.’

‘I just talked to her.’

‘No, you ran away from her,’ said Alex. She shrugged. ‘It was you she was looking for. Said she wanted to… I’m just saying, think about it. Sometimes you need to – _I’ve_ got to call my mom back.’

‘So you want to inflict difficult conversations on everyone in the vicinity?’

Alex laughed. ‘Yeah. But I mean. Maybe it’d be good for you?’

‘Good for me how?’

Alex had gone pink. She jammed her helmet onto her head and dodged past Maggie to get to her bike. ‘Nothing,’ she said, muffled.

‘What do you mean? Good for me how? Oh, now _you’re_ running off, are you?’

‘I don’t – I – I have to get ready for sister night. See you tomorrow.’

She unlocked her bike and mounted it with the grace of long practice. Maggie, leaning back against the wall, watched her manoeuvre out of the space, onto the road where rising heat wavered across the scorching tarmac. Maggie scuffed a stone across the thorn-strewn dust. Once the sound of Danvers’ engine had faded to nothing, she smudged her hands across her face and started walking in the opposite direction for the bus stop.

 

*

 

Maggie slipped in ten minutes late, downing her coffee on the go to chase away the effects of too many glasses of wine and not enough hours of sleep the night before. She _basically_ made it for the start of rounds.

Half the interns looked like they’d walked onto an open battlefield and huddled together warily in the damningly open space of the ICU. The other half were only questionably awake.

‘Do they teach you nothing in medical school? No? Or were you simply not paying attention?’ Someone dropped a pen and didn’t dare pick it up. ‘Try again. Why would you not prescribe this patient beta-blockers?’

‘Because… Infernians don’t have adrenoceptors?’ Maggie cringed. At least the poor sap wasn’t one of hers. She mouthed the next words under her breath along with Dr Grant:

‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

‘Tel… ling… you.’

‘Well, that’s something. Also, totally wrong. Can anyone tell Dr Allen what’s wrong with giving beta-blockers to an Infernian? You.’

‘Because they’re allergic,’ said an intern who was definitely not the “you” in question. Maggie winced. Mike _was_ one of her ducklings, and already this morning he’d tried to correct her on two pieces of basic medical procedure and made an inappropriate joke about a patient with chlamydia. Maggie had no compunction about leaving this duckling in the path of a hungry fox. Or, alternatively, the blonde ball of terror who stalked the hospital in four-inch heels.

‘Because they’re allergic,’ said Dr Grant. She took a step towards Mike. Anyone with sense would have taken a step back. ‘What a surprise. Also wrong. If you feel such a need to bless us with your unwanted opinion in future, please at least try to make it an informed one. And if you don’t have any informed opinions, which I am confident you don’t, you will _keep quiet._ Is that clear?’

Mike looked like the penny was starting to drop. ‘Yes sir Dr Grant.’

Dr Grant’s gaze swept across the interns. ‘Now. If nobody but Dr Overconfident here is determined to speak out of turn – thank you. _You._ ’

‘Dr Grant’s not taking prisoners today, is she?’ Dr J’onzz commented. Maggie wondered if he’d only come up to watch the show. He wouldn’t be the only one to subtly or not-so-subtly treat Interns’ First Rounds as free entertainment. (Dr Grant didn’t mind. She liked an audience.) Maggie pushed the thought away. Dr J’onzz was more professional than that. And could read minds.

‘He deserved it.’

‘True.’

‘Beta-blockers can cause Infernians to lose control of their pyrogenesis,’ said Kara. ‘Due to a nervous system response, _not_ an immune system one.’ (Mike pouted.) ‘And that’s… bad.’

Dr Grant nodded. ‘A severe understatement but, essentially, yes. I think we can agree a patient spontaneously combusting would indeed be _bad._ ’

A few people drifted away while Dr Grant continued her lecture. They’d seen this before. Dr J’onzz turned to Maggie with a change of subject. ‘Ah, Dr Sawyer. You’ve been treating Mr Fisher, haven’t you? How would you consider his condition this morning?’

Maggie sketched out her thoughts, keeping half an eye on rounds. Mike looked chastised enough to cause no more trouble. Most of the others had shaken themselves awake. Going well. Dr J’onzz wrapped up their discussion, left Maggie with a nod, and caught up with M’gann to hold a quiet consultation in a corner. At least, Maggie assumed they were talking about work. Nobody had ever caught them _not_ talking about work. It was an annual game to see how long it would take all the interns to realise they were married.

Then, in a whisper, the mood changed – heads turned towards the far door – the drifters were joined by others dodging towards occupied beds in a hurry to look busy before a new figure strode into the room. Dr J’onzz, as a senior member of staff, had the privilege of calmly strolling past the newcomer. Maggie dug her nails into her palm (cripes, she’d let them get long) and held her ground.

The Chief of Medicine drew to a stop by the cluster of interns.

‘Good morning, Cat.’

Dr Grant broke off from her lecture. She smiled, oh so politely. ‘Good morning, Lillian. Did you need something?’

‘I was wondering how all our lovely interns are settling in.’

‘Unprepared, as always,’ said Dr Grant. ‘But they’ll learn.’ It was the most positive thing she’d said about them all morning. A couple of the interns blinked.

‘I’m sure you will,’ said Lillian. She did reassuring very well. ‘Cat is quite a wonderful teacher. She’s had… plenty of practice.’

‘Did you come down from your ivory tower just to compliment me, Lillian, or did you want something?’

Dr Luthor nodded. She did apologetic well too. ‘I hope you won’t mind if I steal your attending for a few minutes. If someone would care to – ah, Dr M’orzz. Thank you.’

M’gann received a too-wide smile as she moved in to guide the interns down to the next patient. An observer might have believed it perfectly friendly. Anyone who’d been at NC Central for more than five minutes knew Dr Luthor had been trying to get rid of M’gann for years.

Maggie was aware the Chief of Medicine had to make hard decisions. There would never be enough money to go around. But she believed, and she wasn’t the only one, that the decisions Dr Luthor repeatedly made to deprioritise alien patients were not hard at all. Not to mention, rumours still circulated – in bars at a safe distance from NC Central itself – about how she’d come by the position of Chief in the first place.

She was talking to Dr Grant too quietly to make out anything but the final words: ‘I’ll leave you to it, shall I?’

‘As you like.’

Lillian Luthor wished them all a polite farewell and departed: regal, imposing, nothing but benign. All the same, when she was safely out of earshot everyone relaxed.

‘Chop chop!’ said Dr Grant. ‘Thank you, M’gann. As you can see, children, our gracious overlord likes to drop in unannounced from time to time. You can stop gawking now. Let’s get back to work. Here we have a Gevan suffering from unusual presentation of a common gravitational dysfunction…’

At the end of rounds, Maggie gathered together her little clutch and shepherded them into the break room. A few were quivering. Eve Teschmacher promptly burst into tears. Another member of the group pulled a large bag of cookies from somewhere and started to eat them with mechanical determination.

Maggie crouched next to Eve and handed her a tissue. ‘You know how many times Dr Grant made me feel like an idiot in my first week?’

‘How many?’

‘I don’t know. I lost count.’

Eve laughed through her sobs. Okay, Maggie thought. She could do this. She just had to pull them together enough to concentrate on their work. ‘Nobody said it was going to be easy –’

‘What’s everyone’s deal with Luthor? She seems cool.’

Maggie ground her teeth. Mike.

Kara Danvers spoke up before Maggie could articulate how far Lillian Luthor was from _cool_. ‘My sister calls her a demon incarnate.’

‘Devil, Kara. Not demon.’

Everyone turned. Alex Danvers, of course, leaning against the door. ‘Alex!’ Kara rushed forward, wrapping Danvers in a hug. ‘I met Dr Luthor, well I didn’t _meet_ her, but I _saw_ her, she’s just as horrible as you said, she wants Dr Grant to –’

‘Kara,’ said Danvers, in a tone of warning. She squeezed back, then extricated herself. ‘And it’s Dr Danvers to you, lowly intern.’

‘Sure, whatever.’ Kara continued beaming. Maggie resisted the urge to tell her to look less cheerful. They could probably do with more cheerful around here. Truly bizarre behaviour for an intern who’d just been through their first rounds, though. She actually looked like she was enjoying herself.

‘Sawyer,’ said Danvers. ‘Need to talk to you.’

‘Okay.’ Maggie considered the interns. They’d mostly calmed down. ‘All right, guys. Nobody said it was going to be easy, but nobody told you how hard it would be either, because they couldn’t. It’s harder than you could have imagined. Things always are. But you wouldn’t be here if lots of people didn’t think you were capable of keeping up, and it _will_ start to make sense here. Okay?’

She handed Eve another tissue, and sent the interns off.

‘Nice speech,’ said Danvers.

‘Thanks. What’s up?’

Alex led Maggie to Mr Fisher’s room. She didn’t say anything before letting Maggie examine him. He was still heavily sedated, and Maggie couldn’t detect any improvement in his condition. Or at least, it was – messy. His gills looked better again but his O2 saturation was worse, and now barely hovered within tolerable limits.

Danvers’ familiar scrawl sat below Maggie’s most recent notes on the charts. Then M’gann’s, detailing a dose of powerful antivirals. Maggie hooked it back to the end of the bed and shook her head at the silent, unconscious alien.

‘J’onn doesn’t want to go ahead with the surgery either,’ said Alex.

‘Yeah.’ That was the impression she’d got.

‘I still think it’s the right thing.’ Breath. ‘Sawyer, I need you to back me up.’

‘Danvers, you know I don’t –’

‘When have you known me to be wrong?’

It was a challenge. Maggie sighed and reached weakly for the joke: ‘There was that one time in February of 2015…’ Danvers folded her arms.

Fine.

What had looked like an infection at first didn’t so much now, and if Danvers was right – if she’d been right all along – that it had nothing to do with the low oxygen saturation (always a particular concern in aquatic species) or the freaky heartbeat (though that had fortunately calmed down since yesterday), getting rid of it wouldn’t make much difference either way. If the last surgery had come too late to prevent his gills going into shutdown, no matter how much it looked like they were healing…

They’d run him through several hopelessly uninformative scans. The other tests wouldn’t be back before this evening at the earliest. How long could they leave him in limbo?

‘Four hours,’ said Maggie. That was as late as they could push it and still be fairly sure of scheduling a surgery for the same day, and it would give the antivirals a chance to kick in. If they made no difference – ‘He’s not getting obviously worse. If he hasn’t improved in four hours, I’ll back you up.’

And try convincing Dr J’onzz and M’gann when they had their minds set to something – not something Maggie hoped she’d have to do.

 

*

 

Their elderly, injured and comparatively frail patient looked ready to jump on Maggie if she stuck any more needles in. Maggie turned to Kara, hovering by her shoulder. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you think of the inflammation, Dr Danvers?’

‘I’ll kick you if you touch my knee.’

Kara smiled sunnily. ‘If you can kick me your knee must be feeling better, Miss Taylor.’

The old woman gawped at her. Kara darted up the bed, out of kicking range, and placed both hands on Miss Taylor’s upper leg. ‘Here?’

Somehow – and Maggie couldn’t have said how she did it – Kara talked their wary patient into letting her investigate around the swollen knee joint. Miss Taylor winced, teeth gritted, but she didn’t kick. Kara looked up and said, ‘What’s next?’

‘Take her blood pressure. You know how to do that?’

She did. She’d also mastered IV switchovers and had a pretty good handle on drawing blood. Trust a Danvers to be sickeningly competent. It was funny, Maggie thought, because Alex had been right otherwise – they weren’t much alike – for one thing, Maggie had spent the first week she’d known Alex Danvers complaining about her (mostly to Emily, she recalled, with an odd pang), whereas it would have been hard to dislike Kara even if she’d wanted to be anything but relieved at the presence of at least one intern she could hope wouldn’t suffer a nervous breakdown.

They apologised to Miss Taylor for poking and prodding her and set off for the desk. On the walk away Kara asked, ‘What’s next?’

‘It’s lunchtime. Don’t you want a break?’

‘I’m not tired.’

‘Oh, you sweet summer child.’

‘Hey! That’s Game of Thrones!’ said Kara, eyes lighting up.

Maggie thought: she’d have to tell Alex Danvers she was glad her kid sister hadn’t been wasted in surgery, and see if she spluttered.

The thought of Danvers brought her back to the thought of Emily. Maggie still hadn’t looked at her messages. The little red icon on her phone had been glaring at her accusingly for more than a day. She knew what the messages would say.

‘Dr Sawyer? I said, do you watch it?’

‘Huh?’

‘Sorry. You were thinking about something.’

Might as well see the last couple of patients down this corridor. Maggie swapped out the charts at the desk and pointed Kara towards the next room. ‘It’s nothing. My ex.’

‘Hmm?’

‘She showed up out of the blue yesterday and I can’t decide what to do. I mean, what would you do, if you hadn’t seen someone for months and they suddenly _ambushed_ you in your place of work?’

‘Run away?’

Maggie stopped mid-step. ‘Your sister told you, didn’t she.’

‘Um. Yeah.’

‘That’s nice of her.’ Maggie shook her head and continued down the corridor. ‘I mean, God. I thought she was still mad at me, but now she’s here and she wants to make nice and – really, though. What would you do?’

‘How long ago did you guys break up?’

Maggie counted back. Not long before Christmas – no, before that, just after Thanksgiving. ‘About six months.’ Had it been as long as that?

‘That’s a while.’

‘What I did wasn’t something that goes away,’ Maggie said quietly.

Kara’s expression was sympathetic and, bless her, she didn’t ask. She said, ‘And you haven’t been out with anyone since?’

‘No…’ Not a whisper. ‘Working here isn’t exactly easy on your dating life, and the lesbian dating pool is hardly overstocked to start with.’

‘I guess.’ Kara fiddled with her glasses. ‘Alex dates plenty. She’s never made it sound that bad.’

What had Maggie just said? She rolled her eyes. Trust Alex Danvers, of course. ‘I’m sure she does. Come on, Newbie.’

The next couple of patients required fairly simple checks, and were each less bad-tempered than the last. Mrs Robertson at the end, in for a hip replacement, patted Kara’s hand in possible confusion with her grandaughter and forced a couple of mint humbugs upon her.

James headed past them in the hall just as they made their exit. He slowed oddly, head swivelling to stare at something in the room – then momentum carried him onwards.

Kara missed the door.

‘Oh my god,’ said Maggie, rushing to help her. Kara Danvers wasn’t the most graceful at the best of times, she’d already determined (another contrast to her sister’s ability to cross a room silently in clunky biker boots), but walking into a wall was next-level. Kara waved her away.

‘I’m fine.’ She laughed. ‘I bounced. I always bounce. Who’s that?’

They caught up with James at the nurses’ desk. Maggie made the introductions. While filing records away, she found herself subjected to stilted, awkward conversation.

‘Jimmy Olsen? I think you know my, uh, cousin.’

James coughed. ‘Yeah. Big guy. Yeah, I know him.’

A minute later, Kara giggled, and Maggie finally caught on. This was straight people flirting. She felt like she’d tuned into _Animal Planet._ Educational as it was, there was only so much Maggie could take, and she reached for another chart.

‘All right, Newbie. Who’s next on the –’ Her pager beeped. Maggie swore at it, then, once she’d read the message, swore again. James was already moving.

‘What’s up?’ said Kara.

‘Holy shit,’ Maggie repeated. ‘Right. You –’ Without bothering to explain, she hailed Nurse Vasquez to keep an eye on Kara and quickstepped it for the elevator.

Three and a half hours into the four-hour allowance, Mr Fisher had gone over a cliff. When Maggie arrived she found the room crowded. M’gann and Dr Grant were holding a rapid-fire conversation about the merits of intubation. James fussed with the old sphygmomanometer. A couple of other nurses looked ready to jump as soon as someone told them how high. Danvers (the original Danvers) skidded in a little behind her.

‘Coluvians undergo annual aestivation. He won’t come to any long-term harm. It’s the arrythmia I’m worried about,’ M’gann said.

‘Aestivation. And I thought scales complicated things enough.’ Dr Grant beckoned Danvers over. ‘I need your surgical opinion. Fitting a false lung. What’s the survival rate for the procedure? In this species?’

‘Low,’ said Danvers. Maggie managed to get hold of a chart, and her own heart stuttered at the sight of the oxygen saturation figures. They’d crashed. Blood pressure too. What did M’gann mean about arrhythmia?

‘But you were pushing for it before? Do you stand by that?’

‘Yes,’ said Danvers. ‘Doubly so.’

Maggie spoke up: ‘I agree. He needs the false lung.’

‘We still haven’t ruled out infection…’ M’gann trailed off, sounding uncertain. She rubbed her forehead. Maggie looked between her and Dr Grant: Dr Grant had seniority, and she knew more about aliens than most, but she typically deferred to M’gann when it came to treating off-worlders. Dr Grant, too, seemed thrown.

But only for a second.

‘Is Dr J’onzz available?’

M’gann frowned. ‘J’onn’s in the middle of cardiac surgery.’

‘Who else do we have?’

On a Friday afternoon the answer was _not many._ Danvers said, ‘Me.’

‘You’re a resident.’

‘I’m the best qualified after Dr J’onzz to perform a thoracotomy on a Coluvian. Anyway, Dr Stein’s in surgery with him and Dr Queen just got called for an emergency caesarean.’

She met Dr Grant’s gaze steadily. Maggie thought, Dr Grant must have heard plenty about her, Dr J’onzz’s protégé. After a second she nodded. ‘Fine. You’ll do.’

From there things moved quickly. Dr Grant corralled a number of orderlies to hustle Mr Fisher down to the surgical wing, already calling ahead for teams to prep an OR. Alex bore the grim expression of one going into battle. Maggie waited behind.

‘It’s a shot in the dark,’ said M’gann. ‘It’s –’

None of it made any sense. What the hell was wrong with him? M’gann had told her: they used to perform gill removal on Colu often enough, with no more risk of side effects than appendectomy. M’gann had told her: there was damn near nothing in the galaxy that could mess with a Coluvian’s hearts. M’gann had told her. It felt cruel asking, but Maggie had to say: ‘You’re sure you haven’t seen this before?’

‘I’m sure,’ said M’gann. She didn’t sound it. She was frowning.

But all they could do was wait.

 

*

 

‘James! Hey. Earth to James?’

It was past five. The hospital had gone quiet. They’d be gearing up in the ER, but otherwise things were calmer. Maggie, who still had a few hours to work, leaned against the nurses’ desk outside the orthopaedics ward. Mr Fisher was still in surgery. The interns had been shaken gently and pointed in the direction of the outside world.

An unimpressed look replaced James’ dreamy one, and he huffed at Maggie. ‘Any idea what’s going on with him?’ she asked Winn.

‘None,’ Winn said, without looking up from his computer. ‘He keeps telling me he doesn’t think Kara Danvers is the most beautiful human he’s ever seen and he hasn’t been thinking about her all day, so I don’t know. Allergies?’

‘Aw, James, do you have a crush?’ said Maggie.

James had gone back to frowning over timesheets and didn’t react. Maggie poked him with a pen. He went, ‘Whuh?’

‘James, should we all be glad right now I don’t know how to read minds?’

James’ mouth snapped shut. ‘Could you get your thoughts out of the gutter?’

‘I could,’ said Maggie. Then, relenting: ‘Oh – maybe you were thinking about asking her out?’ said Maggie.

‘Such a romantic,’ Winn chimed in.

‘Hopeless.’ Maggie poked James again. ‘In his defence, I think our new Dr Danvers has it too. She walked into a wall when she saw him. Hey – how much d’you wanna bet they’ll get together before the end of the summer?’

‘Nah. James likes pining too much. I give it till Thanksgiving,’ said Winn.

‘Do you mind?’

‘Fine. We won’t let you in on the bet,’ said Maggie.

They settled terms, made a note on Maggie’s phone and pinky-sealed the bet. Winn then spent the next five minutes trying to win Maggie over to the prospect of robot nurses for the hospital. Maggie, idly scanning test results, listened amiably until the difficulty of performing X-rays on off-worlders from red sun planets (though when X-ray machines were already being replaced, it would cost less than Maggie’s bike to upgrade to one with the capability) jarred in her head with the expense of cutting-edge robotic technology. Then she asked, ‘Are you trying to do yourself out of a job or something?’

‘But robot nurses!’ said Winn. ‘Think about it. It would be so cool!’

Maggie rolled her eyes. ‘Are the bloods back for Mr Fisher?’

Winn called up a page and made a face. ‘Which Mr Fisher?’

They spent a minute sorting through the near-identical files. (Coluvian patients were numbered by their first registration with the hospital; their real names couldn’t be transcribed into English and their birthdays would break the computer systems.) ‘No, not yet,’ said Winn.

Maggie irritably crumpled up her coffee cup and aimed it at the trash bin. She missed.

‘Dr Sawyer, your new best friend is coming,’ said James.

‘Which – oh, crap.’ It was Dr Overconfident. Maggie ran a mental tally of the ways he’d managed to annoy her already today, and set off swiftly in the opposite direction.

She ignored the shout of, ‘Dr Sawyer! Hey!’ emanating behind her.

Rounding a corner brought Maggie to a long, empty stretch of hallway, windowed on one side, and bereft of patients’ rooms or other exits on the other. Maggie considered her options. Nothing for it. Hoping Mike wouldn’t reach the corner in time to see, she dodged into the nearest store cupboard. Very dignified.

She wasn’t alone.

Maggie’s eyes met Alex Danvers’ by the light of the softly buzzing bare lightbulb. She clicked the door fully closed, counting under her breath: ten, twenty – no sign of Mike; no sound of movement outside. Safe.

Only then did she register Danvers’ position.

She was on the floor, knees pulled up to her chest, and her expression was – it was something. It was the opposite of crying, Maggie thought. A crying Alex Danvers seemed as unlikely as Dr Luthor in a party hat, handing out (unpoisoned) candy to the neighbourhood children, but it would have been easier to deal with. Maggie did know how to deal with crying people.

Instinctively, Maggie sat down next to her, curling her feet under her legs. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, as if she couldn’t guess, clutching at the tenuous thread of hope remaining.

‘He died.’

The thread snapped. Maggie put her head in her hands. It had been a hard day – week – whatever. She needed coffee. Not even to drink so much as to hold, warm cupped in her hands. Patients died, of course, in hospitals, with distressing regularity, but some deaths were harder to take than others: the kind ones, the young ones, the ones you thought you could save. The ones you thought you _had_ saved, until they picked up MRSA on the recovery ward and went spiralling towards oblivion. Or whatever had happened to Mr Fisher. Not MRSA. Not anything Maggie recognised. Did it matter now?

But Alex Danvers – Maggie had seen her lose patients like that before. Seen her brush herself off and continue with her work. Had never seen her come close to breaking down. She supposed everyone had their tipping point. But it was curious.

‘Why’re you in here? Hiding from the interns?’ said Danvers.

‘Your sister is one of those interns.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Kara’s fine, though. It’s Mike who’s driving me round the twist. Thinks he knows everything because he didn’t sleep through a lecture one time.’

Danvers snorted.

Maggie changed the subject. She had no reason to dwell on Mike. ‘Remember you found me in here once?’

‘God. That seems like a lifetime ago. I think you were crying?’

‘Probably. I spent too much of my time crying in this closet.’ The words were out before Maggie remembered she’d never told anyone that. Danvers knew about a couple of incidents, and so did some others, and she always wondered how much M’gann had gleaned – but she’d never _told_ anyone: how much bigger it had been than a couple of crying fits; how scared and lonely she’d felt for much of the first year. Or the comforting irony of taking refuge in a literal closet. And Danvers was –

A work friend. Or some kind of weird long-term acquaintance she’d known too long to really befriend, who’d once given a crying Maggie a hug because Dr Grant had given her three patented Dr Grant Speeches within two hours. Maggie knew her coffee order, and the words to every song on her paperwork playlist, but until two days ago she hadn’t known her sister’s name.

Odd to think now, but Maggie remembered enjoying that hug in a way people in monogamous relationships weren’t supposed to; and that must have been the first time she’d considered –

(And she might have been hiding from Emily’s take on supportiveness at the time. Or had it been the day a hard-faced man who wouldn’t know scripture from Dante had looked her up on Facebook and announced he didn’t want one of _her_ kind to treat his son?)

Though in the end it had involved someone who wouldn’t care about breaking up a relationship. And wasn’t someone she saw every day. And was into girls, for that matter.

Now here they were again under the surgical masks. Alex said, ‘You don’t do that now, do you?’

‘Not recently. You?’

‘I’m not crying.’ She sat back. ‘We should have taken him earlier. I’m not sure if would have made a difference. But we should have.’

‘Danvers, you’re the best surgical resident in this place. I’m sure you did everything right.’

‘I know I did. That’s not the problem.’ Danvers heaved a sigh and now, for the first time, she looked right at Maggie.

‘It’s Kara,’ she admitted. ‘I love her, I do, but suddenly she’s everywhere and she’d want to comfort me and – y’know? Not here.’

Maggie got it. Stomping on feelings was the only way to keep doing your job around here, and sometimes you could only do that as long as there was nobody trying to make you feel better. ‘Sure.’

‘Do you have any siblings? I can’t remember,’ said Alex.

‘Two brothers.’

‘Younger or older?’

‘Younger.’

‘So you were an only child, for a bit,’ said Alex.

She’d never thought of it like that. Firstborn. Her parents’ darling, until they had a son. ‘Yeah. Not that I remember.’

‘I do.’ Maggie must have looked confused. Danvers wasn’t that much older than Kara (Danvers). Was this another case of Alex Danvers’ brilliance, that she remembered everything from the day she was born?

‘Kara’s adopted.’

Or that. ‘That… makes a lot of sense,’ said Maggie: but what did it have to do with the price of Advil?

‘Her parents died when she was thirteen and mine took her in. It wasn’t easy. She – it was on me to stop her getting hurt.’ Danvers clenched her knuckles white. ‘But I can’t stop her doing anything she wants to do. She wants to be a doctor – she’ll be a doctor.’

‘You’re a doctor. Or do you secretly hate it?’

‘I don’t but Kara deserves better.’ Quietly: ‘She deserves a life that isn’t full of death. She’s seen enough of death.’

Not the time to pull on that thread. Maggie was baffled by one thing, though. ‘And how is any of this your responsibility?’

‘Because it is. Ask my mom. I tried to say – she thought I was jealous. Scared of being outshone.’ There’d been a joke, hadn’t there, Maggie had been planning to make. It didn’t seem funny now. ‘I don’t care about that. I just want Kara to be okay.’

‘From what I’ve seen, she’s absolutely fine.’

Danvers picked at the edge of her scrubs. ‘You don’t know the half of it. But thanks.’ She patted Maggie on the knee before standing up. ‘Good luck with Mike,’ she said. ‘And did you call Emily yet?’

‘Bite me, Danvers.’

After Alex Danvers had left, Maggie pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose to ward away any possible tears. She counted to ten, checked the coast was clear, and ventured out.

 

*

 

There was nobody at the desk. Maggie had to search through the patient files herself to find the right one, not yet greyed-out, and pull up the bloods and other test results. She squinted over them. Once again, she felt like turning them upside down.

Mr Fisher’s gill function had been fine. Everything else – Maggie could make no sense of it. She decided to print them out. Kara Danvers passed while she was fighting with the printer.

‘How have things been going? Think you’re settling in?’

‘Yeah. It could be worse,’ said Kara. She pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘I heard your patient died. The Coluvian one. I’m sorry.’

Maggie could have said _it happens_ or _people die around here all the time_ or _you’ll get used to it_ but she hoped the last wasn’t true and Kara would learn the first two soon enough (sweet summer child) so instead she only said, ‘Thanks.’

She thought there might be more. Kara nodded and went quiet, looking at her feet, ready to bore a hole through the gray-linoleum floor. She fixed her glasses again. Maggie, easing a jammed crumpled of paper from the printer’s jaws, said, ‘Was there something else?’

‘Yeah. I – did Alex seem all right to you?’

Maggie gave Kara a politely perplexed glance. ‘All right?’

‘Just ‘cause, when I asked her about what happened with that patient, she brushed me off,’ said Kara, fidgeting with a pen. ‘Like she didn’t want to talk about it. Alex talks to me about everything.’

Maggie eased the pen away from Kara. She’d break it, carrying on like that. ‘Does she?’

‘Yes,’ said Kara, a bit less certainly. ‘She always has.’

‘She talks to you about standing in front of someone and watching their life slip away and wondering what you might have done differently that would have saved them? About telling parents their child’s dead? About knowing what they wanted to do when they got out of here? And how scared they were? Does she talk to you about that, every day, every week?’

As soon as the words were out she wondered if she should have said them. Not her family. Not her place to interfere.

‘No,’ said Kara softly.

‘No. I didn’t think so.’ Maggie handed the pen back. She could say – but none of it was the girl’s fault. ‘Go home, Kara.’

Kara went. Maggie got the pages printed out on mostly-uncrumpled paper. She found Mr Fisher’s chart in the stack; didn’t know where the main file had gone, if they even had a hard copy; folded everything she had together and left it out with a sticky-note to look it over. Then she headed for the break room, curling up with a mug of slightly-diluted espresso (“Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee”).

‘Are you still meant to be here?’

Maggie lifted her head from the break room sofa. It was lumpy. Had she been asleep? She wasn’t sure. Then, regaining consciousness, she decided if you weren’t sure whether you’d been asleep, you probably had been. Her mouth tasted of acid. Her coffee still sat on the table in front of her, half-drunk, no doubt cold. People took naps deliberately? And Alex Danvers was waiting for an answer.

‘No,’ said Maggie. ‘Are you?’ What time was it? Oh.

‘I went to the gym. My apartment doesn’t have a gym. I’d have thought yours has a bed.’ She sat down opposite Maggie, who pushed herself upright, pressing her palms to her eyes. She must look a wreck. Danvers, to make matters worse, looked freshly-showered, and pretty, and concerned. ‘Why are you here, Sawyer?’

The interns running her ragged. Trying not to think about Emily – and if she went home, to the apartment they’d once shared, she would think about Emily. Mr Fisher. M’gann. General Friday exhaustion. Maggie yawned. ‘I’m not. I’m going home.’

‘What’s at home?’

‘Uh – my bed?’

‘Okay.’ Then: ‘Are you working tomorrow?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Wanna go for drinks?’

Maggie would have sworn she was fully awake now, but she must have misheard. Drinks? The only drink she’d ever shared with Alex Danvers was coffee.

No, that wasn’t true. They’d had arguments about the merits of pulp in orange juice, so there must have been orange juice. Canteen food. Packed lunches and doughnuts and contraband toast. But they had never interacted outside the hospital. Maggie remembered vaguely – early in their internship year, though not so early they were still at each other’s throats, Danvers had invited her along to a few of those group outings organised by the Lance girl and her friends. Bowling and the like. Maggie, with Emily waiting for her at home, had never gone. She didn’t think Danvers had much either, after a while.

‘What?’ said Maggie, still wondering if she’d heard wrong.

‘Go to a bar, play some pool…’ Alex reeled out the list with her hands. ‘Go to a club, get hammered, get laid – no, wait, you had a girlfriend for five years and you’re still moping about it. You probably spend all your Friday nights catching up on _Grey’s Anatomy_ and watering your windowsill herb garden.’

‘They’re bonsai,’ muttered Maggie, unwilling to admit how accurate this assessment was.

‘What, you keep bonsai? Actually, that’s cute.’

‘And we broke up half a year ago,’ Maggie challenged half-heartedly.

Alex Danvers folded her arms. ‘But you still spend all your Friday nights catching up on _Grey’s Anatomy_ and watering your bonsai.’ She waited. Maggie knew this was her opportunity to say – what? To deny it? To tell her she had plans for the evening, as if people with plans could be found napping on their work sofas at nearly nine at night?

Danvers broke the stretched-out silence with, ‘Did you know Emily’s seeing someone? No, how would you? You won’t talk to her. And she said you look like shit.’

‘She did not!’ said Maggie.

Danvers looked triumphant, and Maggie realised she’d finally given her a proper reaction. ‘Okay, that’s not exactly how she put it. It was definitely the sentiment.’

‘What is this? You trying not to think about things with your sister?’

‘Yeah, probably,’ Danvers admitted, raising her shoulders. She stood up. ‘But I can do that by myself. I’m trying to help. That’s what friends do.’

‘Are we friends?’

‘I’d like to think so.’ Danvers slung her sports bag onto her shoulder. ‘Last chance.’

Maggie sighed. The empty apartment flashed across her mind’s eye. ‘Fine. Drinks could be fun. I’ll need to change.’

‘Go change then.’ As Maggie headed off, Danvers added, ‘And you need to file your nails.’

 

*

 

Under things Maggie Sawyer was not surprised to learn about Alex Danvers: she was an excellent pool player. Maggie didn’t stand a chance against her. She tended to play on instinct and a respectable amount of college practice. Danvers used math.

Under things Maggie Sawyer was slightly more surprised to learn about Alex Danvers: she was a bona fide pool shark. After the first few games, by the time it was clear Danvers was as tired of kicking her ass as Maggie was of having it kicked, she winked at Maggie and made a suggestion. ‘Only if you’re not gonna be bored. But I promise you won’t.’

Maggie perched at a high table with her second beer and a bowl of cashew nuts; and if she found the men less than preferred company, it was worth it for the show.

The place was three-quarters of the way to being a dive bar – the kind where leaving the broken lights in place both saved on electricity and hid the dirt in the corners. The bartender’s carefully-curled hair didn’t change the bags under her eyes. A couple of off-worlders were up on the barstools, flicking peanut shells into glasses, though it wouldn’t have occurred to Maggie as an obviously alien-friendly joint. Just the kind of place frequented by the world’s outliers. Maggie had always pictured Alex Danvers favouring somewhere classier. Though it did have a good selection of craft beer.

Maybe the marks were the draw, for Alex. They circled like vultures, leering eyes and looming bodies. Maggie would have been unnerved to stand there but Danvers was totally calm, conning money out of them with practised ease.

What she was doing was not exactly flirting but it might be mistaken for flirting by men who did not expect to meet her cool reserve in a gorgeous woman, so believed it instead coyness or teasing. Maggie knew it was neither and, if not quite an act – not so different from the Danvers she worked with everyday – nonetheless deliberate. She’d toned down the usual swagger. If she hadn’t, they might have resented being beaten by a girl, or at least twigged after the first loss that she had them outmatched.

As it was, it took three wins on Danvers’ part (the last accompanied by a number of cheap trick shots) before they sloped off. She still stood in the middle of the circle, while her final challenger counted out the promised cash in disgrace, but the calm carelessness slipped when she met Maggie’s eyes. She smiled.

 _Oh, fuck_ , thought Maggie. She collected herself. It was only the booze making her feel off-kilter. Only the booze, and the heady atmosphere of the bar, the thrumbeat of unfamiliar music from overhead speakers. Not Alex Danvers’ smile. Because she knew, she _knew_ , the cardinal rule, drilled into her since she was fourteen: Don’t Fall For A Straight Girl.

Alex tucked her winnings into her jacket and sauntered over to join Maggie. ‘You bored yet?’

‘Nope.’

‘You wanna get out of here?’

‘Yes, please.’

The sudden silence of the night was a shock. Maggie pulled her jacket closer round her shoulders in the cold air. They fell into step, walking in no particular direction. ‘How much did you make?’

‘Eighty bucks.’

‘Not bad for an hour’s – work.’ Danvers smiled. There were sharp teeth to this one. ‘What now?’ said Maggie.

‘We went to a bar and played pool, so what’s next on the list…’

Maggie remembered how it ended. ‘You’d better not be trying to get me laid, Danvers. I’m not hooking up with some stranger. I don’t do that.’

‘Fair enough. But you do nightclubs?’

Maggie wasn’t willing to admit exactly how long it was since she’d been in one. She’d grown out of – no, she hadn’t. She’d grown out of trashy nights of cheap vodka that ended hugging the toilet bowl and wondering where all your money had gone because it had, after all, been cheap vodka. And she’d never been big on such reckless partying to start with. How much of a nightclub did you get, when you removed that?

Sharp, confident Alex Danvers watching her expectantly. Maggie had never been scared of a challenge. (Difficult emotional situations, yes; challenges, no.) ‘Yeah. I do nightclubs. Did you have somewhere in mind?’

The answer had better be yes. Maggie had never known anywhere on this side of the city, and even up on what used to be home turf, half her old haunts had probably closed down by now. Realising that, Maggie almost missed Danvers’ answer.

‘D’you know Sapphics? It’s not far from here.’

She did know it. Well, she’d heard of it. Emily had gone there once. ‘You don’t have to pick a lesbian club for my benefit, Danvers.’

Danvers tripped. She ground to a dead halt, bearing an expression of total bafflement. Maggie stopped too. What had she said wrong? Was she missing something here?

‘Sawyer, do you not know I’m gay?’

_What?_

Under things Maggie Sawyer was very much surprised to learn about Alex Danvers, but would realise in hindsight she should not have been.

Alex Danvers. Was gay. A lesbian. Not to stereotype, but rode a freaking motorbike. And Maggie – felt like an idiot; but it wasn’t as if they talked about their love lives, was it? They talked about work. Danvers had never said anything about it. So Maggie retorted, ‘How was I supposed to know that?’

‘Everyone knows.’

‘What do you mean everyone?’

Danvers jerked her hands through the air, splaying fingers with each sentence. ‘Everyone. The whole hospital. I dated Dr Lance for four months. Winn keeps trying to find me a girlfriend.’

‘He does?’

Danvers dropped her hands. She was starting to look – oh, wonderful – amused. ‘Sawyer, _Emily_ knows, and I’ve never spent more than two hours talking to her in my life.’ She hid her mouth, but Maggie could still tell she was laughing. ‘You really didn’t know.’

‘You never said!’

‘I didn’t think I needed to.’

‘It’s not funny.’

‘It’s a little bit funny.’

Maggie could see how it would be funny, to Danvers. She wasn’t the one standing here, trying to recalibrate her whole understanding of someone she’d known for three years. Three years, and she’d missed – and Maggie prided herself on _noticing_ things. It was what made her a good doctor. She noticed now, the faint rumble of cars on another road, the wind rustling round them, that if they stood here for much longer they’d grow cold; that Danvers, once she’d run out of laughter, looked awkward and lost.

‘So, uh… Do you want to go to the club or not?’

Maggie had been thinking of a straight club. A generic club. Somewhere she could nurse a vodka tonic, maybe dance a bit, and ignore all the other people there as jostling bodies. A lesbian club – that was a different question. That was _maybe-I-will_ and Maggie wasn’t sure she felt up for that. But Danvers was wearing a hopeful look and Maggie found herself saying, ‘Okay.’

It was a decent walk.

‘You know Nurse Vasquez is gay, right?’

‘Yes, I did notice the thousandth time or so she referred to her wife,’ Maggie replied.

‘And that Dr Lance is bi?’

‘ _Yes.’_ (Dr Lance had once shown up at the beginning of June with a blue, pink and purple flag in her hair. But also, Maggie had known within three minutes of conversation, when her initial remark upon seeing Dr Grant in person on their first day had been, ‘She’s hot!’)

‘But we’ve worked together practically every day for three years…’ Danvers kept muttering about _how-did-you-not-know_ until Maggie asked, petulantly, if they could change the subject. They settled on the valiantly neutral topic of public transport policy. By the time they reached the place, Maggie had a sinking sense of having sobered up too much to handle all this.

‘Do I have your number?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘Here. In case we lose each other,’ said Danvers. The bouncer stubbed out a cigarette on the sidewalk. Maggie shivered. _Any_ club would have been nerve-wracking after five years. ‘You all right?’

‘Just cold.’

‘Need to get inside.’ Then they were in, and Maggie’s nerves dissipated. It was loud – louder than she’d expected – and nobody was paying the slightest bit of attention to her. A few people were paying attention to Alex, not because she was eye-catching (though she was) but with nods that spoke of familiarity. She wound them through to a seated corner, where it was a little quieter, though still difficult to talk, and slid in opposite a butch couple with foot-tall multicoloured cocktails. Maggie hovered a second before joining her. The seats were little wooden cubes.

‘Who’s this?’ said the one in plaid, with the spiky hair.

‘A friend from work,’ said Danvers.

‘She family?’

‘Yeah.’ Danvers cupped a hand to Maggie’s ear so she could be heard. ‘You want drinks? How’s your tolerance for tequila?’

What had she let herself in for…? Maggie shook her head firmly. ‘No tequila.’

‘No?’

‘Bad time in a youth hostel off the coast of Ireland once. Vodka. Vodka’s OK.’

Danvers briefly squeezed a hand to her shoulder before leaving her with the wolves. ‘So why’ve we never seen you in here before?’ asked the one not-in-plaid.

‘I don’t go out much.’ Casting around for something to throw over that embarrassing admissal, Maggie said, ‘I was supposed to come for a bachelorette party but I ended up on call that night. My ex came. Said something about rainbow shots and drag queens.’

‘Those are on Saturdays,’ said Plaid.

Maggie didn’t add, Emily had talked about three things when she came home that night: rainbow shots, drag queens, and marriage. She’d been drunk. Neither of them had brought it up in the morning.

They asked her the usual questions – where she came from, how she liked her work – until Danvers returned with (non-rainbow-coloured) shots. Not long afterwards, she pulled Maggie onto the dancefloor.

That was the night – alternating drinks and dancing.

They had to stay close not to get separated on the crowded floor. Soon Maggie found herself forgetting. That would be the alcohol, the rush of movement, the bass line timed along to her heartbeat. Forgetting. Alex Danvers could dance, and she was hot as hell, and Maggie had always known that but abstractedly. She’d never been so viscerally aware of it before. Maggie could remind herself of all the reasons for that – she’d been dating Emily, scrubs weren’t flattering, they were rarely in close proximity – but the litany only served to emphasise that none of those things currently applied. She turned instead to the list of reasons it would be a bad idea to act on the new awareness. They worked together. Danvers brought her coffee. They’d known each other for years. (Or Maggie knew her but clearly didn’t _know_ her.) She was, for some value of the word, that thing Maggie couldn’t afford to throw away lightly – a friend.

And gorgeous, and laughing, swinging with the music like – of a sudden the club started to feel claustrophobic; it had been too long; Maggie’s head was starting to pound. She reminded herself to breathe. Had to lean in, up, to talk to Danvers: ‘I need some fresh air.’

‘Yeah, go on.’

Danvers came out to find her about ten minutes into, talking about a girl she’d run into with a giddy smile.

‘You always work that fast?’ said Maggie.

‘It’s not – she’s in the military, so she’s not always around. We had a thing for a while.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Very eloquent.

Danvers poked her arm. ‘Nuh-uh. I came out to have a good time and I’m feeling, crap, how does it go?’

‘Attacked.’

‘Yeah.’

Maggie grabbed her hand. ‘No, but you’re attacking me.’ Then: ‘I’m going home.’

Danvers obviously had friends here, but Maggie still would have felt guilty about leaving her alone. If she’d found someone to make out with, though, different deal. (The picture rose unbidden in Maggie’s head. _That_ emotion was envy. She wasn’t going to interrogate herself about who, exactly, she was envious of. She was still wrapping her head around the idea. Alex Danvers. Gay.

A surgeon would have short fingernails anyway. Was practical.

Then: oh.)

‘You’re going home? Aw.’ Sad face. She didn’t try and convince Maggie to stay. Maggie found her phone and fumbled through it until she got to the Uber app.

‘You be all right? By yourself?’

‘Yeah. Pfft.’

Danvers hung around with her until the Uber arrived, and sent her off with a hug. ‘Did you have fun?’

‘Yeah, I did,’ said Maggie, and Danvers beamed, and it struck Maggie belatedly she was telling the truth. It had been fun. Maybe Danvers had been right that she needed it. Not that she’d tell her that. Not that she was sure she’d think so in the morning.

They hugged again.

 

*

 

Maggie climbed very carefully out of the Uber and up the darkened stairs. What time was it? Late. Three o’clock. Yes, three was quite late. Or really three was early in the next day. Not that early. A whole three hours in.

She might have been drunker than planned. How much had she had? She’d lost count after the first few, but Maggie knew she’d been keeping up with Alex, and Alex was. Tall. Faster metabolism. Went to the gym, so lots of muscle. Yes…

But here was her apartment, and she was inside, and there was the light switch (whoops), so it didn’t matter too much if she was, maybe, a little drunk. Maggie swayed by the door for a minute, trying to get her bearings.

She needed to water her plants.

Her phone buzzed, and Maggie went hunting for it in her bag before remembering it was in her jacket pocket. Ooh, a text from Alex Danvers, all by itself at the start of a message thread. _Did you get home safe??_

Maggie sent a rainbow emoji, a sunglasses emoji, a snail emoji (because the journey had taken _ages_ ) and finally a tree to indicate she was watering her plants. While she had her phone out she might as well read the other messages indicated by that glaring red dot.

Emily. Emily wanted to meet up. Talk.

For once, Maggie felt brave enough to go with it. She thought up a reply to Emily and typed it out carefully three times, then dropped her phone to the couch and picked up the watering can. There went the water. Carefully.

A reply from Alex Danvers. _So yes?_

Should she go to bed now? Maybe she should go to bed now. Ooh, but first…

 

*

 

Maggie woke to the ping of a message from Alex – Danvers. She blinked away sunlight, pulled the comforter over her head, brought the phone under with her and realised the phone’s light was even more piercing in a darkened space.

‘Ow.’

_Why did you send me an underwear emoji last night?_

Maggie scrolled back up the messages. She didn’t know. She had a vague feeling she should. There was another unread message, from Emily, and Maggie groaned aloud when she saw the thread: there were three versions of the same misspelled message arranging to meet Emily today.

To which Emily had replied cheerfully, ‘OK!’ And named a place and time. Which was not a time – Maggie realised after a moment’s panic – not a time she’d already slept through or missed.

A second, different panic immediately followed the first. She messaged Alex. _Oh shit!_

Drunk-Maggie had a lot to answer for. Maggie quickly explained the situation to Alex, while contemplating the possibility of backing out. No – not so easy. For one thing, it didn’t sound like her _wonderful_ co-worker would let her forget about it.

_You can’t change your mind. It’s a sign._

_Do you believe in signs?_

_No. But it’s a sign._

Maggie turned the phone upside down and lay still for a count of sixty. No nausea, that was something, but her head ached and her tongue was threatening to stick to the roof of her mouth. At sixty and then some she rolled out of bed, draped a blanket over her shoulders and shuffled through to the main room.

There she learned the answer to Alex’s initial question. A pile of Emily’s things teetered on the back of the sofa. A spare phone charger, a copy of _The Color Purple_ , and two pairs of panties.

_Very thoughtful of you._

On the counter she found a glass of water, and a slanting note from her drunk self on the back of an envelope. It read, in wobbling half-inch-high letters, _Here have water it hydrates you. Youll need electrolytes. PS Alex Danvers is really gay. Did you know? I didnt._

Maggie inspected the glass of water, took a sip, and almost gagged. There was more salt in it than seawater. She poured the rest down the sink.

_Should I give her things back?_

_Keep the charger. TOSS the panties. I’m not sure about the book._

Maggie rinsed out the glass, left a vitamin tablet to dissolve and started on toasting a bagel. _It was present_ she typed with her free hand.

 _To you?? Then don’t give it back silly._ The phone buzzed again while Maggie was eating her well-toasted, dry bagel very, very slowly. Damn, that thing was not helping her headache. _2nd opinion: return it._

Maggie didn’t ask who the second opinion came from. She opted to leave the book where it was.

_If im talking 2 E you should talk to you’re sister._

Three little dots preceded Alex’s reply. _Damn you, Sawyer._

By the time she reached the coffee house, she was tempted to back out again. Maggie silently debated with herself the merits of taking off her sunglasses. Cons: sunlight. Emily would be able to see her eyes. Sunlight. Pros: she wouldn’t look like the obviously hungover twenty-something having brunch in a coffee house on a Saturday morning.

She kept the glasses on.

Emily pegged what they meant and said, ‘Serves you right,’ but without vitriol. That was the surprising thing about the whole ordeal: though even Emily couldn’t keep up the cheerful façade for long, she truly didn’t harbour anger towards Maggie.

Just pain. Hurt. Betrayal. Grief.

All the things worse than anger.

When Emily had gone Maggie finished her coffee, headed for the bathroom, locked herself in the final stall and sat there with her head on her knees for a good twenty minutes.

 

*

On Monday, Alex Danvers showed up in the break room with coffee in a Noonans cup. It was very early. Maggie had expected the place to herself. She needed another three hours’ sleep. In the absence of that, coffee would do.

‘Black? No sugar?’

‘If you keep asking me that I’m going to get you a caramel latte one of these days and I won’t tell you what’s in it.’ Alex perched on the arm of the couch. Said, ‘I talked to Kara. How did things go with Emily? You went?’

‘Yeah, I went.’ Maggie lifted the lid and huffed over her coffee (also, to check it wasn’t a latte). ‘It was… actually okay. We talked. Figured some stuff out.’

Alex raised her cup like _cheers._ ‘To facing demons,’ she said.

‘To facing demons. Oh, here they come…’ said Maggie, as a couple of interns tripped in for their first full week at work.

Alex snorted. She turned back to Maggie. ‘Tell me about the youth hostel in Ireland.’

‘So I’ve just turned nineteen, about to go into my sophomore year, proud owner of a passport for the first time in my life…’


	2. July: The Achernian's Advice

Maggie could have set her watch by the tramping of intern feet across the ICU floor. She no longer felt obligated to stop and listen to rounds every time, but if she was in the vicinity she’d slow down to pay attention. This morning she was glad she had.

‘I don’t see what’s so difficult, Eva,’ said Dr Grant. ‘I assumed that by now you would at least have grasped the basics of opiate dosage.’

‘I’ve – I’ve only been here a month,’ stammered Teschmacher.

‘And have you spent all of it hooking up with your classmates in storage closets instead of cracking open a book, or only most?’ The intern turned crimson. Maggie scanned them to see if she could identify the other culprit – there he was, by his smugness. Quelle surprise.

‘A month,’ Dr Grant continued. ‘You’ve been here a month, not _only_ a month. One-twelfth of your internship. If you’re not getting to grips with things by now you should start to wonder if you won’t at all.’

‘Maybe she’d find it easier if you’d stop breathing down her neck,’ said Kara.

‘Ah, Kiera, so you do have a backbone,’ said Dr Grant. ‘I was starting to wonder if you’d traded it in for those horrible clogs you call shoes.’ She marched forwards. Kara paled. ‘Perhaps you think you get an opinion, since _you_ at least are semi-competent,’ Dr Grant continued. ‘Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for all your peers, and you should all understand by now you can’t afford to be less than brilliant. The consequences here, in case the point escapes anybody, are life and death. So anyone who wants to be less than brilliant should not become a doctor.’ She lasered in on Kara: ‘Which means I will thank you not to interrupt me when I am offering much-needed criticism to half-trained butterfingers who think they know how to be doctors.’

Maggie’s phone buzzed. She checked it. _Rounds?_

 _You’re sisters getting shouted at_ , Maggie discreetly typed back.

_Her fault??_

_Mostly but Dr G’s v bad-tempered today._

_Kara can take it. She deserves it after last night._

_?_

The little ellipsis appeared and disappeared at the bottom of the screen. Maggie watched it for as long as she could, then shoved her phone away when she noticed Dr Grant tapping her fingers. ‘Dr Sawyer, see if you can get Miss Teschmacher to even vaguely comprehend the dosing procedures, then come and find me.’

Maggie first had to comfort the intern before she had a total meltdown. ‘Why is she always like that?’ Eve asked, plaintively.

‘She’s not,’ said Maggie. ‘That was worse than normal.’ Exactly what she needed, halfway through the week. The prospect of another endless day with the interns – the days, they kept coming – was exhausting enough without Dr Grant taking out whatever frustration on them.

When she checked her phone, she found only a short message from Alex: _Ice cream. Tell you later_.

At the central desk, Maggie found Dr Grant glowering at a letter on fancy-headed paper. She folded it away neatly before paying attention to the hovering Maggie.

‘Mrs Smith is transferring this afternoon, isn’t she?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I was supposed to have a meeting with the Achernian diplomat to discuss information access, but I believed the meeting was today and the diplomat, it transpires, was under the impression it would be yesterday.’ Maggie listened with a sense of foreboding. ‘I’m trying to reschedule but the situation is tense enough.’

‘So we might not have access to the medical records,’ said Maggie.

‘At this point, it’s a distinct possibility. Think you can handle it?’

What was she going to say? No, I’m just going to leave a patient to suffer? Maggie said, ‘I’m ready to try.’

‘Good. Now please go and take care of your interns. If I see Dr Overconfident’s face again before I’ve had my latte, I may scream.’

*

_Sawyer, where are you?_

_W mgann + dr j be soon_

_Are they doing the, “How do you do, Dr M’orzz?” “Very well, thank you, Dr J’onzz,” thing again??_

_Yea they are_

‘Dr Sawyer, if you don’t mind,’ said M’gann. Maggie quickly concealed her phone inside her scrubs. M’gann made sure both Maggie and Dr J’onzz were paying attention before continuing, ‘You told the nurses you were experiencing some discomfort. What’s troubling you?’

‘I’d say it’s my back, doctor, an’ it’s also my hands, an’ it’s also bein’ ob-lee-gated to listen to the yammerin’ o’ that Kaptelyte hussy in th’next bed over, if you catch my meanin’.’

M’gann stretched out the Kapteryte woman’s fingers. ‘Painful, would you say?’

‘More stiff, like.’

Bearing a grim expression, M’gann turned to Dr J’onzz. ‘See, Dr J’onzz? That’s the fourth in a month. Second this week.’

‘Second what inna week, doctor? Summat wrong with me? Somethin’ else, is.’

Maggie knew what M’gann was referring to. For weeks now, scattered patients had been presenting with similar sets of symptoms. Drowsiness. Fever. Joint stiffness. There were variations – it was hard to diagnose fever in Infernians, since their core temperature melted glass – but there were critical consistencies too. All had been off-worlders of varying species and origin. All had started to exhibit irregular, rapid heartbeats along with collapsing blood pressure. None had obviously been suffering from any bacteria, any virus, any fungus, or anything else identifiable. Most had been in otherwise good condition: recovering from surgery, or in with non-life-threatening physical injuries.

All, within a few days and despite everything the hospital threw at them, had rapidly deteriorated and died.

How did you say to someone who’d come in to get a slipped disc dealt with: we’re sorry, but it looks like you’ve picked up the mystery disease we’ve got running around and it’s very likely you’ll be dead by Sunday. How did you say that, on a sunny afternoon, with magpies bickering outside the window?

Only once you were sure, it seemed they’d agreed; and the patient’s heart rate had returned to normal since the nurses called them in. For now they didn’t tell her anything. In the corridor, Dr J’onzz and M’gann quietly discussed the issue. ‘I know you think it’s consistent…’

‘But they’ve all been totally different species. I noticed, yes,’ said M’gann.

‘I’ve never seen an Earth-original pathogen take down that wide a range. Not in three hundred years. And there’s no spatial pattern, we’re not even seeing all the same symptoms, I’d hesitate to call it diagnostic –’

‘Spontaneous cardiac arrest is pretty damn diagnostic.’ M’gann shook her head, rubbing it again. Dr J’onzz reached for her, almost like he’d forgotten Maggie was there. She fell away to give them space.

‘Let me in.’

‘I’m fine, J’onn. Just tired.’ M’gann squeezed his hand.

Maggie coughed. ‘We haven’t identified anything, viral or otherwise. Should I run bloods?’ She didn’t meet M’gann’s eyes. M’gann might be right, but how the hell were they supposed to tackle it when they didn’t have the first clue what they were looking for?

‘Yes, do.’

Maggie tracked down Alex at the desk, glad to take her leave of the Martian pair. Alex looked her up and down. ‘Something wrong?’

How do you do, Dr J’onzz? She could have told Alex that M’gann had called him _J’onn_ and maybe here, away from them, it would have been funny. Maybe not. It seemed too private a thing, and people were dying; which they sometimes laughed at, but not beforehand. She said, ‘Another one with the vanishing sickness.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah. So tell me. Ice cream?’ Maggie said, trying to push the whole thing out of her mind. Alex helped, by launching into a story about vegan ice cream. Apparently some friend had given Kara a tub and Kara I-ate-a-vegetable-last-year Danvers had tried to underhandedly foist it onto Alex.

‘Like I couldn’t tell the difference. Vegan ice cream is gross.’

‘It is not.’

Alex raised her eyebrows. ‘The way you drink your coffee, I don’t trust your opinion.’

Maggie huffed. ‘Come on,’ she said, steering Alex towards their patient’s room. ‘We still on for this evening?’

‘Not if it involves vegan ice cream.’

‘Let it drop, Danvers.’ She couldn’t help smiling. ‘I’m not gonna try and widen your palate. But I know this place that does the world’s best tiramisu.’

The new patient was their Achernian transfer, Mrs Smith. (Achernian officials did not share their Coluvian counterparts’ sense of humour.) Maggie had known she’d come in before she heard anything about the patient herself, because on the way back from her lunch break she’d had to wade through half a clan of Achernians clogging up the waiting room on the first floor, trying to scam their way in outside visiting hours.

‘I’m your surgeon, and Dr Sawyer will be looking after you the rest of the time.’

Mrs Smith had taken a probably-not-accidental tumble down her apartment block’s flight of stairs two weeks ago. That was bad enough, but the damage had been compounded by the doctors at Desertview afterwards, and they were the ones Maggie really wanted to give several black eyes to. Their slapdash work had left the woman in severe pain, unlikely to walk or use her left hand again without a number of surgeries that could have been avoided if they’d done more in the first place than wrap bandages around her and foist her out of Desertview as quickly as possible. Then charge double for the bandages.

Though Maggie did understand why they might have been unwilling to operate on her hand. Achernians were immune to all standard anaesthetics. ‘But we’ll be working to figure out a substitute before we take you into theatre. Wouldn’t want to tear your leg open without painkillers,’ said Alex.

Mrs Smith flinched.

‘Don’t worry. Humans stopped doing that over a hundred years ago.’

‘Was that meant to be reassuring?’ said Maggie, once they were out of the patient’s earshot. ‘She’s three hundred years old! You need to work on your bedside manner.’

‘I know, I know.’

Maggie spent the next five minutes complaining to M’gann, fondly, about Alex Danvers’ ability to make patients more scared than they’d started. ‘It took me fifty years on Earth to learn to speak gently to humans,’ said M’gann, scribbling on an overworked chart.

‘Yes, but Danvers is one!’ Maggie needed coffee. ‘She wasn’t raised in the middle of a war against genocidal maniacs. She grew up in a California suburb.’

M’gann handed her the chart. ‘Help Mrs Sanchez get her release forms in order, would you?’

*

Study mornings with the interns could be… interesting. Today Maggie found herself asking the question, ‘How did you break your pager, Kara? You threw it? All right…’

‘I didn’t throw it very hard,’ Kara Danvers protested.

Maggie had once thrown hers from the hospital roof. When she retrieved it, she’d found it unscratched and still beeping. She sent Kara off to find the relevant bit of the admin department and rescued her coffee before Mike’s elbow knocked it off the table. (There were dents in the wood where he’d stabbed too hard with the pen. It was totally wrong of Maggie to wonder which of this year’s interns fell under the off-worlder affirmative action programme – which reporters-Lillian-Luthor-had- _definitely-_ never-lunched-with kept deriding as “reverse speciesism” – but only one obvious alien among the intake suggested there were at least a couple more not disclosing themselves, and she had her guesses.) Every time the interns grumbled about the amount of reading she had them doing, she added another book to the pile.

‘You know nothing,’ she said, ‘And no, it’s not all online.’

Dr Grant and M’gann had claimed the warm spot by the cofee-maker to hold a quiet discussion. Maggie was a long way from being senior enough to take part in such high-level conversations, but they didn’t seem to mind if she edged close enough to listen in, as long as she kept quiet.

‘I agree we need to handle this thing, but Eliza Danvers? She’s a bio-engineer. We need a cardiologist.’

‘We’ve got those by the dozen,’ said M’gann. ‘Eliza knows more about the nuts and bolts of off-world biology than anyone on the planet, including me. And she might do it as a favour.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Dr Grant. ‘Have you drawn any conclusions about…’

‘Dr Sawyer! I don’t think this is right.’

Maggie offered a silent prayer to whichever gods dealt in patience and restraint, and crossed to argue the case with Mike that, once again, he did not know better than world-leading experts. She was facing away from the door, so the first thing Maggie noticed was not the newcomer but that all the interns – even Mike – had fallen silent.

It was their bug-eyed expressions, though, that told her who she’d see when she turned around.

‘I’ve been hearing aliens are dropping like flies,’ said Lillian Luthor. She drew out the word _alien_ like she’d have preferred to use another, less respectful label. ‘The board won’t be happy if it spreads to our human patients. And with the numbers packed into that ICU, well. Could be like wildfire. Is it really necessary to cram so many – people – onto the ICU ward?’

‘Take it up with oncology,’ said Dr Grant. ‘And you needn’t worry about contagion. We’ve seen no sign of patient-to-patient spread.’

‘We’re not even sure we’re dealing with a single condition,’ M’gann added.

‘Nonetheless,’ said Luthor. ‘Isolation might be in order. But you can tell me more about it, can’t you, Dr M’orzz? I believe they’ve all been your patients.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Maggie.

‘Dr Sawyer,’ hissed Dr Grant.

Maggie didn’t stop. Moonlings. Robot nurses. An old woman pushed down a flight of stairs. ‘Mr Price was one of mine, actually. Dr M’orzz only oversaw his treatment, like she does every off-world patient in this place, because she’s the only one qualified to. God forbid you might hire another another doctor to handle our biggest specialism!’

‘ _Dr Sawyer!_ ’

Dr Grant stepped forward, with a glare that Maggie knew meant trouble later. ‘As Dr M’orzz said, we’re not sure we’re dealing with anything consistent. And if we are, there’s no value in any isolation or quarantine if we don’t know how it spreads. It would be a waste of resources. But news of it will spread fear and panic. The board won’t be happy to hear about discrimination, either.’ She raised a finger to Lillian Luthor. ‘You know the old hands are all resolute about treating off-worlders.’

‘What discrimination?’ said Luthor. ‘Separating out alien patients doesn’t have to mean treating them any differently.’

‘Separate but equal. I’ve never heard that one before. Drop it, Lillian.’

‘That’s Dr Luthor to you.’ To M’gann she said, pointedly, ‘What are you – Green Martian? Similar physiology to Tamareans, and one of those caught it, didn’t they? Maybe you should watch your own health.’

M’gann stared right past her. Maggie tried to catch her eye, without luck.

‘Have you heard back from the Achernian diplomat yet?’ said Dr Grant.

‘He’s no longer talking to me.’

‘Oh dear. I _wonder_ why. Was it your poor manners or just your personality?’

‘You must be rubbing off on me.’

‘If only. Maybe you’d feel inspired to talk to a few of those patients you want to shove into a dungeon.’

‘I only want the best for the hospital and all our patients.’

Dr Grant snorted. Luthor’s mouth twitched, but she said nothing other than a bland farewell to the room’s occupants, and left. Once she’d gone Dr Grant beckoned Maggie over, and Maggie knew she was going to get the riot act.

‘That was a stupid thing to do, Dr Sawyer. Right in every point, but stupid. I thought you knew better than to backchat Lady Luthor.’

‘You do it,’ Maggie muttered.

‘She can’t easily fire _me_ ,’ said Dr Grant.

Maggie shuffled her feet. In theory, her own job was reasonably secure, as long as she did it right: in practice, the Chief of Medicine could easily enough see her out the door. Bad as that was for Maggie’s own life, it was potentially disastrous for their off-world patients. Outside of Dr J’onzz and Alex in surgery, she and M’gann were the hospital’s only specialists in the infinitely broad field of exobiology. And Luthor had been trying to pin something on M’gann since she became Chief.

‘Also, as you have no doubt surmised by now, you can take it as established you won’t have information access from the Achernians.’

That had totally slipped Maggie’s mind. Damn. Achernians were notoriously wary of allowing anything they considered useful intel to fall into the hands of a potential enemy, and notoriously broad with both definitions. They’d been known to censor children’s songs. Letting humans have direct access to medical info was always going to be a hard sell.

That would have been less grating, if the official Achernian presence on Earth hadn’t also refused to provide any form of healthcare to members of those clans they considered _unclean._ Being unclean was the kind of thing that encouraged a family to pack up and set off for life in a different solar system so, no surprise, they made up a substantial proportion of the Achernians on Earth. It was hard enough to get the embassy to handle their paperwork, never mind let them into their medical units.

She didn’t relish the prospect of explaining to an elderly alien that they planned to, in effect, inject her with various cocktails of chemicals and see if any of them worked well enough to allow for the kind of major surgery that wouldn’t leave everyone involved with permanent nightmares. And Alex; Alex was too smart to shoot the messenger, but she wouldn’t be happy about flying blind. But that was life around here, wasn’t it?

And M’gann –

M’gann had already gone.

Maggie turned to her interns. ‘If anybody else asks me what’s so bad about Dr Luthor, I’m starting a swear jar.’

*

Kara pushed her glasses up her nose and shifted to deflect the attention of the businessman at the next table. Maggie watched Alex raise her eyebrows at him, as if to say, _try it_ , and he cleared his throat and went back to his paper.

Maggie wasn’t sure how she’d been convinced to join both Danvers sisters (and a friend of Kara’s, fashionably late) for Friday-night drinks, but here she was, and – if nothing else, seeing the pair of them under out-of-work conditions was enlightening enough to make any awkwardness worthwhile.

Kara in particular, since she didn’t know Kara outside the hospital at all. Maggie was somehow unsurprised, though she’d only seen her in scrubs, to learn that Kara dressed like a vintage market stall. And drank club soda.

The bar was a reasonably smart one, though, and Kara didn’t look the slightest bit out of place. It was Maggie who felt under-dressed; and she couldn’t work out why the bartender had felt scandalised enough by her drink order to make her repeat it twice. But it was Friday, she had beer, and better than that she was drinking it outside her apartment in the company of other people.

Kara talked animatedly about one of her patients while they waited for her friend to arrive. Maggie’s phone chirped and she checked it under the table, sending a quick reply.

‘Here we have a rude millennial,’ said Alex. ‘Oh, is that the girl from the karaoke night?’

(One of the more frightening things Maggie had learned about Alex Danvers over the past month: though she drank as much on the average night out as any normal human being, she did karaoke stone-cold sober.)

‘Nah.’

‘That’s a shame. She was nice.’

She had been. A few girls’ numbers had found their way into Maggie’s phone over the past month or so. All of them had been nice. Some she’d messaged for a bit, but she hadn’t really been feeling it and all the conversations had fizzled to nothing.

She felt the need to say, ‘It’s not a girl. It’s my grandmother.’

‘Your grandmother isn’t a girl? What would she say if she heard that?’

That was funny, Maggie told herself. It was funny. It was _fun_ , a night out, people she liked – but she’d been on her feet all day and she’d yelled at her boss and the bartender didn’t like her and she kind of, really, wanted her apartment.

Kara’s friend arrived, and the conversation swung to introductions. ‘Maggie, this is Lena.’

If she’d felt out-of-place by coming to this bar in a henley and old sneakers, Maggie thought she might feel perpetually under-dressed simply by existing on the same planet as the newcomer. She consoled herself with the thought of how hard it would be to run in those heels. Lena offered her a hand: ‘Dr Sawyer, I presume? Lena Luthor.’

Luthor? While Lena and Kara settled down to conversation and debate over drinks orders, Maggie nudged Alex. ‘Danvers, you little sister’s best friend is Lillian Luthor’s daughter?’ she asked, wondering if this could somehow, possibly, be a different Lena Luthor. Lena certainly didn’t resemble Lillian. But there could only be so many people who’d casually wear a dress of that price tag to a merely smart-for-the-common-people bar.

Alex drained her beer. ‘Estranged daughter,’ she corrected.

‘But – how?’

‘College.’ Alex shrugged.

Small world. She gave Lena Luthor another, more careful study. Maggie liked Kara but that didn’t mean she trusted her judgement; the younger Danvers sister was someone she could easily see being led to trust too easily.

‘I ran into your mother earlier today,’ Maggie said to the Luthor girl, halfway through the next round and a bowl of chips. She needed to know what Lena knew. ‘Can’t say she’s my favourite person.’

‘So I’ve heard. She makes quite an impression over there, doesn’t she?’

Maggie shrugged. ‘It’s generally agreed that she’s the devil in disguise, yes.’

‘That was you,’ said Alex.

‘Everyone says it,’ Maggie waved it off, while Kara said to Alex, ‘No, _you_ said it –’

‘Yes, but Maggie started it.’ Alex pulled herself upright. ‘Remember, when we were interns, you asked Dr M’orzz – she’s a Green Martian, a telepath –’

Maggie watched Lena Luthor’s reaction. A flicker. Nothing obvious. Might just be surprise, or acknowledgement.

‘If her no-mind-reading rule held for beings of pure evil.’

‘You didn’t!’ said Kara. ‘What did she say?’

Alex raised her eyebrows at Maggie, who reached for her drink, took a gulp, decided Alex was willing to wait her out, and said, ‘That it would be a public service to read Dr Luthor’s mind and find out what she was plotting.’ Kara squeaked. ‘But also that she can’t,’ Maggie added quickly, ‘Actually can’t – Luthor’s, I mean Dr Luthor’s got some way to block her. Trust a Luthor, right? No offence.’

Lena blinked.

‘Which M’gann said was a bit of a relief, because Lillian Luthor’s wasn’t really a head she’d want to go digging in,’ Maggie concluded.

‘No. It’s certainly not,’ said Lena quietly. She didn’t look offended in the least. Okay. Maybe she’d do.

They wrapped up fairly early; Friday or not, only Kara had the luxury of a potential lie-in tomorrow. Alex asked if any of them wanted to head, ‘Somewhere a bit more lively?’

‘What, you’re going out _again?_ What’s wrong with a quiet night in?’ said Kara.

Alex said, ‘Maggie?’

‘Pass.’ She’d been counting down the minutes until she would get home to her sofa. Another hour out, which might stretch to two, four – Maggie couldn’t take it. And she thought she still had some tiramisu in the freezer.

Alex made a sad face which almost tempted Maggie to relent. Almost. She said, ‘The world won’t end if you finish a Friday night sober enough to remember where you live.’ Not to mention, she’d appreciate working with a _non-_ hungover Alex Danvers in the morning.

‘Fine. I’ll behave and go home and do laundry instead of having _fun._ Will that make you all feel better?’

(Lena threw up her hands to remove herself from the “you all”, and slipped away to settle the check.)

‘Yes. It will,’ said Kara.

Maggie walked with Alex some way down the road, lingering at the crossroads to let Maggie finish her rant about the prices mechanics charged.

‘Shoot. You should have let me take a look at it,’ said Alex.

‘You know bike engines?’

Ask a stupid question. Alex grinned, walking away from Maggie backwards. ‘Took one apart when I was seventeen.’

‘I’m not even surprised. Is there anything you can’t do?’ Maggie called after her.

‘Why would I tell you?’

Then Maggie was alone, laughing to herself, settling into stride for the walk back to her apartment. Kara Danvers and – Lena Luthor. Who’d have thunk?

*

What passed was a weekend in the hospital working on Mrs Smith’s anaesthetic substitute. That went as smoothly as expected, which was to say, not at all, and left the old Achernian in a thoroughly foul mood. Late on Saturday afternoon she threw a metal tray in the direction of Maggie’s head; the most recent cocktail not only hadn’t worked but had left her hyperactive and agitated, and they spent the next twenty minutes trying to restrain her from climbing out of bed. Three separate family members tracked Maggie down to apologise, and she had to explain awkwardly – three times – that her clan wouldn’t be interested in starting a blood feud and no reparations were in order, particularly reparations that involved throwing a dinner tray at one of her patients. Each time Alex listened, totally straight-faced, and offered no help whatsoever.

Otherwise, it was a fairly stress-free day. Weekends in orthopaedics tended to be peaceful. There was almost nobody around – not her interns to pester her with their constant cries of ‘Dr Sawyer! Dr Sawyer!’ – not Dr Grant still capable of striking fear into her or M’gann hunting round the surgical wing for anything that might be responsible for spreading an infection. Maggie liked the hospital empty, liked knowing she’d get the break room or the canteen almost to herself, and though there remained enough work to do she wasn’t swept-off-her-feet busy and had a chance to claim those breaks.

Alex had more downtime: no electives at weekends. Maggie kept finding her flicking through the variety of magazines left behind on the coffee table. On Saturday night she coaxed Maggie out, for a night of uncreatively-named cocktail pitchers (“The Blue One” was, indeed, blue) and constant rounds of, ‘This is Maggie, she’s single, she likes bonsai and dogs.’ When the club kicked them out Maggie stood on the sidewalk under a drooping cypress, staring blankly at a number scribbled on a napkin like it was nineteen-ninety-nine. No. No way. Not happening.

That one had been nice too.

And there was Alex, glowing in the soft lights, waving goodbye to new friends who – who would be forgotten in the morning, Maggie realised, because she’d begun to notice Alex didn’t have a great number of real friends. Kara, of course, and Dr J’onzz, old flames who blew in off the north wind every so often – and Maggie, who still wasn’t sure how she’d come to be included; but knew (even with the upcoming hangover) she wouldn’t trade.

Mid-morning on Sunday, Maggie found Alex in sunglasses, pouting at the slim pickings in the magazine pile. She’d worked the pile down from _Time_ and _New Scientist_ to _Cosmo_ and the Avon catalogue. ‘What am I meant to do with this?’ she said.

‘Here. I know.’ Maggie claimed the copy of _Cosmo_ and hunted down the sex tips page. She flattened the glossy paper across her knees, sat up straight, cleared her throat and launched into a dramatic reading. She made it halfway through before Alex’s expression caused her to break character.

‘They’ve said worse than that,’ she said, glumly, when she realised the rest of the article was mostly sensible. Then, brightening, she hopped onto Google to hunt down Cosmo’s best-of worst-of advice, and Alex nearly choked on her orange juice. The anaesthetist walked in to glare at them like she’d been left with a pair of children. So that was Sunday.

Over in the ICU, M’gann’s Kapteryte patient slipped away.

By evening they’d managed to figure out a set of substances that would, between them, numb sensation and leave their patient heavily sedated – though still technically conscious, which Alex was clearly anxious about. The following day Maggie finished drilling a couple of interns on code procedure with just about enough time to head down to the OR for the end of Mrs Smith’s surgery.

The observation booth was packed full of Achernians. Kits had been hoisted on backs to give them a view through the window or stretched up to see it on their toes. Mrs Smith’s even-more-elderly husband had pride of place at the front. All of them clamoured with questions, which Maggie answered as well as she could, while urging them to pipe down: the booth was reasonably well sound-proofed, but twenty off-worlders making a racket would be plenty audible in the OR. A nurse came out to shush them twice.

Alex was hard to unsettle, though, and the surgery went like a dream.

Maggie congratulated her at a safe distance from the blood-covered protective gear, which Alex proceeded to strip off, clearly tired but proud of herself. ‘You did good.’

‘I know, Sawyer.’

‘Still need to have your head unswollen, though.’

She checked in on Mrs Smith later on and found her recovering well. She was allowed two visitors – husband, daughter – and Maggie ignored the smuggled-in kit under the bed, gnawing on what looked like rock candy.

‘Has that nice nurse kissed the pretty blonde doctor yet?’ the Achernian asked.

‘Not since you went into surgery,’ said Maggie, turning her hand over. (She was going to lose her bet. It was tempting to shove James and Kara together somehow – set them up with each other on a blind date, or just lock them in a supply closet. But that would be a lot of effort, and cheating, and they would be mad at her, and Winn would be sad. Anyway, now the prickly awkwardness of first attraction had worn off and Kara had mercifully stopped giggling, their careful attentiveness towards each other was rather sweet to watch.) ‘Remember, you need to let your hand rest until the stitches have healed, or you might pull them. Just a couple of days.’

Maggie checked her blood pressure – low, not concerning – then took her pulse, with a twinge of worry. Achernians’ cardiovascular systems were quite similar to humans’, structurally speaking, and they were prone to the same variations in heart rate and rhythm. Brachycardia was one of the effects they’d expected from the sedative concoction. It should have worn off by now, but that didn’t mean there was anything wrong. And her pulse was too _slow_ ; that hadn’t been a symptom they’d seen elsewhere, when the others –

She asked, ‘Do you have any pain in your joints? Any stiffness?’

Mrs Smith offered her an indulgent smile. ‘Sweetheart, I’ve had pain in my joints since I landed on this rock. Couldn’t you take some of the gravity out?’

‘No can do, I’m afraid,’ said Maggie, scribbling down her pulse. ‘The gravity comes with the planet.’

‘Rats.’

Maggie waved to the small face peering at her from under the bed on her way out.

_Ready??_

_Nearly. See you brkrm 10._

A final circuit of the ICU, during which nobody coded or otherwise attempted to exit the mortal plane, brought her to the end of the day. Maggie changed quickly, stowing her sweat-lined scrubs away with relief in favour of clothes that made her feel like a human being.

Coming up to the break room, she heard a pair of familiar voices, raised enough to be audible from a distance away. They weren’t shouting, but it was the kind of conversation that could definitely be called “heated”.

‘I’m over here in a totally different branch of medicine and she still thinks it’s my job to take care of you. It’s not!’ she heard Alex say.

Kara sounder calmer, less aggravated than like she was speaking up simply to make herself heard. ‘Alex, I know…’

Maggie slowed and contemplated walking away again.

‘Now somehow it’s my fault you got in a fight with your attending –’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Kara. (Maggie winced.) ‘I’m fine, I don’t expect you to look after me, I know you’ve got your own things to deal with – why don’t you just tell Eliza?’

Maggie was definitely backpedaling now. With any luck, she’d get to the corner before either of them left the break room. But she knew how thin the walls were, and didn’t dare move too quickly –

‘It’s not that easy,’ snapped Alex.

‘Well there’s no point shouting at me about it, is there?’

Maggie didn’t catch what Alex said in reply; she’d lowered her voice, and Kara’s response, likewise, was more controlled. A second later the younger Danvers sister swung out of the room, saw Maggie and, totally unfazed, said, ‘Hi, Dr Sawyer.’

Maggie stopped backpedaling. ‘Um. Hi. I’m just gonna…’

‘See you tomorrow!’ said Kara.

Alex poked her head out wearily. ‘Hi, Sawyer.’

‘I’m sorry. I think I heard a bit of…’

‘It’s fine. We shouldn’t have been arguing in a public place.’ Alex snorted. ‘ _I_ shouldn’t have been. God, I don’t need to take that stuff out on Kara. This is what I was…’

What she was worried about. Maggie said, ‘If it helps, I’m sure I owe you a drink or six,’ and Alex brightened.

‘What do you think? Back to Sapphics?’

‘Can we not, tonight?’ said Maggie, heading for the tap to grab a glass of water. ‘No more gay bars.’

‘Hmph.’

The remains of the Danvers sisters’ dinner lay scattered across the coffee table. There was a lot. Kara Danvers – even if she ate nothing, ever, outside the hospital – put away more food than Maggie would have thought possible. Alex moved to clean it up. Maggie leaned against the counter, trying to ignore the metallic tang of the tapwater.

‘I appreciate your efforts to get me laid or get me a girlfriend or whatever it is you’re trying to do, but right now I really just want a drink and a game of pool.’

‘Sure,’ said Alex. ‘You do need to get laid, though. You’d feel better. Get that dopamine rush.’ She swept an armful of packaging into the recycling. Maggie rolled her eyes.

‘I know the science as well as you, Danvers,’ she reminded Alex.

‘Do you, though? Do you really?’

*

‘You did ask,’ said Alex.

If their usual place was three-quarters of the way to being a dive, this bar had reached the line and carried on several leagues past it. Alex had brought them to the dingiest, emptiest, most old-man’s bar Maggie had ever seen. She didn’t think the specials menu had been updated since the Civil War.

It had a pool table. It had something mostly resembling a pool table, at least, though there was no sign of chalk for the well-worn cues and part of the surface was peeling away. Even Alex had trouble with it at first. She soon picked up the knack of the table, though, and beat Maggie handily.

After the first game and the first pint Alex decided Maggie needed lessons. She wasn’t exactly wrong. Maggie soon wished she’d argued against the notion harder, because she spent the next half-hour overwhelmed in a whirl of rapid-fire talk about angles and vectors and other math terms Maggie vaguely remembered from college. That would have been enough to make her head spin. But the real reason she couldn’t focus – along with a glass of scotch to wash down the beer – the real reason was because Alex’s hands were on hers, gentle, guiding them to a better position on the cue; because Alex was right _there_ , so close Maggie thought she could feel static between them, could feel her skin buzzing (did she know the effect she was having? Did she mean it?), could feel the tangible difference between _I-know-you-are-attractive_ and _I-am-attracted-to-you._ The line it was dangerous to cross. The knowledge of Alex’s sexuality had stopped bouncing around inside her skull a while ago but there was a difference between _could, in theory_ reciprocate and _did_ and only if she did was it all right –

Then for moments she’d see Alex’s hair fall in front of her face and her fingers would itch to push it back, to touch, to explore, and she didn’t feel anything scared, felt almost eighteen again; and Alex would toss her head back, and Maggie would look down, in case Alex caught her staring.

Down was the pool table. Alex came in very close to demonstrate the shot she needed to take, then coughed and pulled away quickly. She flashed Maggie a grin Maggie would have sworn said she was up to something.

Now she was almost certain it was on purpose. Certain enough to say, ‘I know what you’re doing.’

‘What… am I doing?’

Oh.

Alex’s bafflement looked genuine, and Maggie thought it was. She wasn’t that good an actress. But how could she not know? Did she not see the way Maggie responded to her touch? Did she not see the way she responded to Maggie’s?

But such a move would admittedly be very subtle for Alex. Maggie had seen her flirt. She was about as underhanded as a ten-tonne truck. Which was not to say it was ineffective; just that when Alex Danvers was flirting with a girl, if Alex knew it, the girl also knew it, and the rest of the bar knew it too.

So this was not Alex trying to pull something, either to wind Maggie up or in earnest. This was Alex, a pint and a half down, who had in her comfortable tipsiness decided she needed to be as physically close to Maggie as possible.

Maggie wondered if she knew _that_.

And what she, Maggie, would decide to do with the information. Because Alex was already hard enough to resist.

She lost, as usual. They played another game, and suddenly Maggie was playing well, or Alex was playing badly, or both – enough in combination for Maggie to stop near the end of the game, spinning the pool cue on its end, and say, ‘Still not doing anything?’

This time Alex flushed scarlet. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Maggie landed the shot; Alex missed something even Maggie would have called easy; Maggie made another, and dropped the black with the next one. Alex raised both hands as if she hadn’t just lost the match, and went to buy drinks in celebration. Maggie watched her while slowly restacking the balls. She might not be sure how much Alex knew or wanted of the thread drawing between them, but she was certain of one thing: she’d let Maggie win.

The thrill of the thought faded as Maggie realised what it meant. She couldn’t -. She’d never loved Emily as much as she might, if she let herself, love Alex Danvers. And Maggie hurt the people she was supposed to love.

They played another match. Alex won. Afterwards, Maggie convinced her to pool their quarters and had a crack at the jukebox, which was so ancient a quarter would still net a whole song and only played physical CDs. They negotiated over it for a few minutes, keyed in their selection, and made a quick exit as the first lines of _What’s New Pussycat_ started up.

It would take a few minutes for the remaining patrons to notice anything amiss. All the same, Maggie pulled Alex round the end of the block before stopping, blazoned under the yellow streetlights, out of breath and wearing matching grins. Maggie dropped Alex’s hand.

She couldn’t. But.

They lived in different directions. They should part ways now if they were going to. Or say – why didn’t one of them say? – there was still time to go to another bar, or even a club, though it was a school night and they weren’t, actually, eighteen and they were supposed to know how to _do_ this by now.

Maggie reached up and kissed Alex on the cheek.

Alex found her lips, briefly, deliberately, before Maggie could pull all the way back. She froze. So did Maggie, breathing in the charge passing between them.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’

Alex blinked, slow, in the yellow light.

‘Life’s too short,’ said Maggie. ‘Y’know?’

Then – Maggie wasn’t sure how they’d got there – her hands were round the back of Alex’s neck, and Alex’s careful surgeon’s fingers cupped her cheek, and all Maggie could describe was the point of connection: lips, tongue, unbalancing desire. Not enough. How had she gone so long without this? Had she forgotten how it felt, to kiss, to touch, to push a girl up against a wall and figure out how to make her gasp? And here was Alex, Alex, to remind her, pulse beating fast and strong under the soft skin of her throat, warm and solid, hands moving from Maggie’s cheeks to her hair then –

Then _ouch._

‘Sorry, sorry.’ Alex reached to disentangle her watch from Maggie’s hair. Maggie leaned, approximately, against her clavicle. ‘Got it.’ One hand pressed against the back of Maggie’s head. And Alex said, ‘What now?’

*

By some miracle, they made it to Alex’s place. A very nice place, as far as Maggie could tell in the dark, and though that was an interesting place to put a bed it did make tumbling straight onto it that much easier. Maggie lay back on her elbows while Alex removed her boots, soaking in her silhouette, the shape of her, washed out in grey.

‘Ow. Fuck.’

A boot went flying. Finally Alex crawled up and pinned Maggie and, not that Maggie precisely objected to the position, but it wasn’t where she wanted to be right now so she pressed upward, tucking her legs under, bringing them both to sitting, which was a better angle to kiss around Alex’s jaw and neck and find her pulse.

(And Alex _let_ her, she noticed with a thrill, hadn’t objected that she’d taken charge – in fact, Maggie would call that sound the opposite of objecting -)

With her hands she traced around the bottom of Alex’s shirt, then skin, abdominals, lower ribs, sternum, dusting over her breasts and round to her back – dorsi, scapula, bra strap. Bra clasp? Where was it? Maggie ran her fingers along the width of Alex’s back twice before she realised.

Alex _would_ be wearing a sports bra. ‘Huh,’ said Maggie. At a loss for what to do next, she kissed Alex again.

Alex must have noticed hesitation, though. She said, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Bit of a technical problem,’ said Maggie. ‘I’m really, really good at bra clasps, I swear. But I can’t undo invisible ones.’

Alex laughed, almost giggly, and laughter bubbled up in Maggie too. She rested against Alex’s front, kissed – clavicle – and fumbled for the buttons on her shirt. Two minutes later Alex got stuck in the bra when she tried to fluidly pull it off over her head, and Maggie had to help her, and they were laughing again and everything was going wrong but it didn’t matter. It didn’t _matter._

What mattered was: she was in Alex’s bed. Shuffled up all the way to the middle now and despite their clothes’ best efforts to cling to them soon they’d been discarded. Whispered directions, comments, words of astonishment – _Like this? Yes. Good. If I touch you here? Keep going, yes, please keep going…_

If Maggie had ever wondered what Alex Danvers looked like naked, she couldn’t remember it. That wasn’t what they did. Yet here they were together. And six hours ago she wouldn’t have thought it made sense but here, now, it did make sense: unclothed, together, unburdened.

She traced bones with Latin names, the lines of veins, learned hidden freckles and other secret places. Alex stretched with her head tossed back, crying out wordless things, but one of them might have been Maggie’s name.

Turn and turn about. Maggie knelt, balancing against the back wall, and the thought drifted in unbidden: _why haven’t we –_

She didn’t allow herself to complete it.

Alex moved tentatively until Maggie said, ‘I’m not made of glass.’

‘Glass wouldn’t talk back,’ said Alex, but she was less cautious after that, and Maggie’s legs began to shake, trying not to tense them until – _there. Yes. There._

A flare, a rush, and when she came at night in the emptiness of her own bed Maggie did so with hardly a gasp but she couldn’t have stopped herself crying out now, and Alex, bless her, damn her, kept on until the last tendrils of sensation burned away.

Maggie came down from her high aching pleasantly; and came down, literally, because sustaining that position was not an option, to collapse on the bed beside Alex, with their arms and sides pressed against each other. And no, Maggie didn’t _want_ to move –

Count of sixty.

She rolled out of the bed and bent to find her underwear.

‘Maggie?’

Maggie said, to a point in the air above Alex’s head, ‘You were right. It did help.’

Nothing. Nothing for a long, indrawn breath, the moment of waiting drawn out, because she deserved that, even if Alex would relent and say, ‘I’m always right.’

Maggie pulled on a pair of panties she was 95% sure were hers.

‘I thought you might run,’ Alex continued, and Maggie cursed herself – because whatever Alex said now, she was trapped here until she’d got at least her shirt and pants on. And she couldn’t see her shirt in the dark. ‘Hoped you wouldn’t. Thought you might.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t hurt my feelings, Sawyer. It’s just sex.’

Was it? She’d have said so either way. But Alex, Maggie thought, did have sex that was just sex. So maybe true. It stung. Shouldn’t have. Should have been what she wanted.

_Now I know what you look like under your clothes. Now I know where to touch you. Now you know where to touch me._

Well, maybe Alex believed it.

‘Are we still…’

‘What? Friends? Of course we are.’

Maggie decided not to bother with socks. But something inside her had unwound. If she’d screwed up their friendship – that, she would have regretted. Not this. It was done. They could carry on.

Never mind knowing what Alex Danvers looked like naked, and where her sensitive spots were, and how to make her yelp, which was not at all knowledge easy to discard; never mind the other thing, the thing she was ignoring at the edge of her mind. Carry on.

She wouldn’t regret. Leaving.

A very nice place. Maggie tried not to trip over anything expensive on the way out. Like her dignity.

*

Maggie would happily have traded her morning in the ICU for the seventh circle of hell. It would have been more peaceful. Arriving sharp at half past eight, she barely had time to finish her coffee and scrape her hair into a ponytail before she was dragged into the fray.

She couldn’t put her finger on any reason for things to be particularly bad. It didn’t feel like anything specific so much as the dim, harried way when for no apparent reason everything decides to happen at once. Lillian Luthor, Maggie had to admit, even had a point – the ICU was overfull, and Maggie didn’t know how it had ended up that way. As many beds as could be reasonably crammed in were arrayed across the space. All but a couple were occupied, and those belonged to patients hauled away for tests or treatment. At one point, they had three simultaneous codes.

If nothing else, it meant she didn’t see anything of Alex.

Maggie wasn’t avoiding her, but that didn’t mean she was disappointed to make it to mid-morning before they ended up in a room together, over Mrs Smith’s bedside. Mrs Smith, who was recovering well from her surgery by all normal metrics.

Mrs Smith, who had a fever, and complaints of drowsiness, and an irregular heartbeat.

Maggie had explained to her, apologetically, with a calm she didn’t feel, what this meant. Mrs Smith had taken it with unnerving nonchalance. Maggie almost wondered if she needed to spell it out again.

Now, though tired, the old Achernian was more than sharp enough still to note the friction between her doctors. After a few minutes of ultra-polite stiffness trying to cooperate on Mrs Smith’s treatment plan – not that they had anything that could be called a _plan –_ she said, ‘Which one of you didn’t call the other back?’

Maggie flustered. She felt her cheeks warm. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ said Alex.

‘So you’re the culprit,’ said Mrs Smith, fixing Maggie in her gaze. Alex smirked at Maggie and headed out. Maggie busied herself checking the IV, which she knew was fine. They’d already been over Mrs Smith’s condition thoroughly. She was declining in a hurry. As Maggie watched, she noticed the old Achernian lose focus for a second, and decided she’d have to pull rank on visiting hours. That might be dangerous with two dozen off-worlders camped out in the canteen, but she was going to do it.

Catching herself, Mrs Smith said, ‘You’d leave a sweet girl like that at a loose end?’

There were lots of words to describe Alex Danvers. “Sweet” wasn’t high up Maggie’s list. And she didn’t owe Alex anything, not even an explanation. It wasn’t like she’d made any promises. Wasn’t like they’d talked much at all. Wasn’t that the problem?

‘She’s not that sweet. You haven’t seen her play pool.’

She’d let Maggie win at pool.

Maggie couldn’t meet Mrs Smith’s eyes. She heard a harrumphing cough, and muttered, ‘I’m not looking for a relationship at the moment.’

‘I wasn’t looking to end up on this backwater bird-infested planet, but here I am.’

‘… Bird-infested?’

‘What else would you call it? They’re everywhere. Little reptiles with wings and no respect for airspace regulations.’ She yawned. ‘It’s a funny thing. Since I landed here, I’ve become quite the birdwatcher.’

‘Yes, you’ve made your point,’ said Maggie. ‘I’ll check back in on you soon. Nap time now.’

She asked Winn to keep an eye on her, and he flinched like Maggie had bitten him. ‘Something wrong, Dr Sawyer? Uh, beside the obvious.’

She didn’t regret sleeping with Alex. She didn’t regret leaving. Last night had not claimed far too much of her brainspace – fuck. Maggie thought about telling him. It would be such a relief to talk about it with someone _._ Just – not Winn, even if he pretty much qualified as a friend. He’d be – ugh – _encouraging._ She’d have more luck talking it out with Mrs Smith, but patients were not to be used as therapists. Kara was Alex’s sister. M’gann – no.

‘I’m fine, Winn.’

The Achernian’s condition continued to deteriorate through the morning. At one point, Maggie left her room to find Dr Grant and Lillian Luthor locked in an argument over whether to move her to the ICU.

‘I’d prefer to keep her _away_ from our other patients,’ said Luthor.

‘She needs constant care.’

‘Not for much longer, intensive or otherwise,’ Luthor said, carelessly.

Dr Grant narrowed her eyes. ‘Would you say that about Mrs Torres with the kidney failure? No? Oh, what’s the difference?’

Maggie’s pager shrieked. A code. Mrs Torres.

Reaching the ICU, Maggie found one of her interns – Mike – standing over the bed gormlessly while the nurses dithered, waiting for instructions. No, not gormless: frozen. Maggie shunted him out of the way and took charge of the code.

Afterwards, she whirled round and marched up to him. That was it. ‘You don’t have a clue what you’re doing, do you?’ she snapped. Louder: ‘This is what happens when you refuse to listen to the people who’re trying to teach you! You need to get your act together.’

‘I’m sorry –’

‘What does that change? If you carry on like this you’re going to kill someone. Sorry won’t make a damn bit of difference.’

Mike shuffled his feet, looking as penitent as he was likely to get. Several of her other interns were hanging out by the desk. They’d heard. Actually, most of the ICU had heard, possibly excepting the unconscious patients. It was the interns who looked jubilant about the shouting, though.

Maggie shooed them off. ‘And guys, try not to make today’s chaos any worse.’

*

She’d never made coffee for Alex before. Not that it was _hard_ ; Maggie knew how she liked to drink it (an unnerving variety of ways, which made it easier not to go wrong), notwithstanding her mild disgust at adding milk even to someone else’s drink (the milk was, unfortunately, included in every coffee variant in Alex’s top five).

No sign of Alex at the main desk in surgery. Kara Danvers was there, leaning over to talk to James while he ran some calculations. ‘Have you seen Danvers?’ They hadn’t. Maggie thought Kara flashed her a cold look, but it was quick – maybe she’d imagined it. She listened to their chat about dosage procedures until Alex, thankfully, came down the corridor.

‘What’s this?’ she asked, accepting the coffee.

Quietly, Maggie said, ‘Peace offering?’

‘You didn’t need to.’

‘Yes, she did,’ Kara chimed in.

‘What did you tell her?’

‘None of your business,’ said Alex. Then, relenting, ‘Not details.’ She nodded, and Maggie followed her away from the desk. Once James and Kara were _well_ out of earshot, Alex said, ‘It was fun, though?’

It had been fun. Maggie couldn’t help looking. Scrubs were still unflattering, and yet. ‘Yeah, but do you know what else is fun?’

‘What?’

‘Watching you fail to pick up girls.’

‘When do I fail?’

Maggie slapped her arm. Alex said, ‘It’s going round the hospital you shouted at one of the ducklings…’

‘Yes, I did, and maybe he’ll behave from now on,’ said Maggie, oddly proud of herself. Oh, god, Dr Grant was going to kill her. But Alex looked impressed and right now that mattered more.

‘How are you doing?’ said Alex.

‘Tired, mostly.’

It had been a tiring kind of day. It had been a more-than-tiring kind of day. Which was – not that it could have gone much worse – only confirmed in its horribleness when Mrs Smith crashed. She still wasn’t in the ICU; she was in her own room, so the orderlies had to race to bring in equipment, and her visitors were there, shit, asking loud panicked questions and refusing to leave; and the nurses trying to chivvy them away hadn’t clocked the Achernian kit, the kid, under the bed until Maggie hauled him out and foisted him, struggling, into probably-his-mother’s arms; and then Mrs Smith died.

M’gann stood trembling over her after they’d taken the time of death, after the other members of the team had rushed off, after – and Maggie waited, but standing was too much effort, so she hunched up on one of the visitors’ chairs instead. Then, though M’gann had the chart to hand, she grilled Maggie for details of the patient’s last hour, of her last day, and Maggie didn’t want to think about it but she answered as well as she could. The questions repeated, going round in circles, and she wanted answers as badly as anyone but this was pointless –

‘It is _not_ pointless.’

‘Dr M’orzz!’

M’gann flinched like someone had hit her. ‘I’m sorry, Maggie. I forgot myself.’

Dr J’onzz arrived. Maggie thought fuzzily that there wasn’t any reason for him to be here, medically speaking; that he must have come because someone had told him, or maybe he’d known himself, from down in surgery, that M’gann needed his help. Or that they needed help with M’gann.

‘Don’t say it,’ M’gann said, before he’d spoken. ‘It’s got to be _something._ This isn’t happening by chance.’

Another loop round the circle. Could she have been exposed to something down in surgery? She’d been operated on only yesterday – but M’gann had already suggested that, and all the ORs had been given an extra-thorough scrub and disinfection, like their standard procedures weren’t thorough enough.

‘For goodness’ sake, it’s as if someone had put together a disease designed to thwart us,’ said M’gann.

‘That’s conspiracy theory talk,’ said Dr J’onzz. To Maggie, said, ‘You can go. Will you inform the family?’

She didn’t want to do that. She kind of wanted to cry. ‘Yeah, I’ll – yeah,’ said Maggie.

Outside the room, she ran right into Lillian Luthor, who looked down her nose at Maggie and serenely stepped out of the way.

Talking to families was always a horrible job, and one Maggie had found herself shafted with more than once when other people wanted to avoid it. But little compared to facing down a whole score-strong Achernian clan to let them know their matriarch had died. They keened. They wailed. They started up a _war chant_ , and, hell, should she inform the embassy? No doubt the embassy, so ready to overlook them when it came to medical care, would be more than ready to bring down the force of law at the first sign they were causing trouble. Who did they plan to take up arms against, anyway? The unidentified person who’d first pushed Mrs Smith down the stairs? Patient Zero for whatever had killed her, if there was a Patient Zero, and they weren’t already dead? The disease itself? They were as directionless as the doctors. Maggie left them to it.

Her pager trilled three times on her way back upstairs, and none of the messages were urgent but the sheer noise was making her nerves grate today. Maggie was tempted to head up and throw the damn thing off the roof. Again. But she’d have to go up past the ICU to get there. She shut herself in the cupboard instead.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid – she could handle this. She was not some hopeless intern having a meltdown because there had been too much blood. She could handle it. In a minute. Count of sixty.

Alex let herself in at about forty-six. Forty-seven. Maggie didn’t know _how_ Alex had found her but there she was, arms folded, compassion written in her eyes. Maggie turned away from her because that was the only way she could talk. Once she’d started, the words tumbled out.

‘They’re all dying. They’re all dying and we can’t save them and M’gann’s starting to lose the plot, she doesn’t know what to do either, and Dr Grant’s going to be mad at me for yelling at what’s-his-face –’

She took a shuddering breath.

‘No, she’s not,’ said Alex. ‘Dr Grant yells at idiots all the time. She’ll approve.’

‘Okay, but he’s an idiot, and the interns aren’t getting anywhere – and – I almost screwed up being friends with you and you know what the really ridiculous thing is? I realised I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it because outside this fucking place, Emily got all the friends in the break-up. I got the apartment. She got the better deal.’ She leaned against the door. ‘And I’m so – fucking – tired.’

Alex put a hand on her back, gentle. ‘That’s a bunch of stuff,’ she said.

Maggie laughed. ‘Yeah.’ She felt, maybe, a tiny bit better for saying it. It wasn’t that she expected Alex to _help_ her with any of it. But just having it out loud made it seem a bit smaller. And now she was covered in snot, and she’d ruined her make-up, and – ‘Shit. I must look a wreck,’ she said, wiping her nose on the back of her hand.

‘Mascara wipes off. You _are_ in a storage closet,’ Alex pointed out.

Maggie breathed. Alex stayed where she was, holding that single point of contact.


	3. August: The Martian's Answer

In the week after Mrs Smith’s death, two more patients came down with the vanishing sickness: and then, nothing. Frightening as it was not to know what had caused it or where it came from, as the weeks passed without a new case – one, two, three – they began to slowly hope it had blown over. The ICU had been running more smoothly. Lillian Luthor was away, and only with her absence did Maggie realise how on edge her bat-like stalking kept the hospital; certainly Dr Grant was less stressed, and no longer taking it out on the interns (which didn’t mean she’d stopped critiquing everything from their diagnostic skills to the way they held their pencils, but that was just Dr Grant).

The interns in their turn were doing better. Mike had been making at least a half-hearted effort to put his head down and work and, though he still deeply irritated her, Maggie reckoned she might make it through the year without actually committing a felony towards him. Eve – quite sharp when she wasn’t panicking – had only cried twice last week. Kara Danvers was the class standout, not just from Maggie’s group but across the cohort, and had been making a name for herself as Dr Grant’s favourite. (Dr Grant had verbally praised her on two separate occasions.)

She and Alex had settled back to an even keel. Alex kept pestering her to go on dates; Maggie noticed she said the same thing to Kara, and had stepped in once to point out that yes, everyone could see Kara liked James, but it was her own business if she wanted to dither over it. Alex had huffed at her and backed off for a couple of days. It had brought Maggie to the entertaining conclusion that for someone who claimed to hate love stories in movies or books (and had never watched _Imagine Me and You_ ), Alex was a serious romantic at heart.

Maggie hadn’t been going on dates. She’d been going to yoga, instead, on Sunday nights. (Alex called this “a poor substitute for real exercise” and had scoffed at the one suggestion she might come along and see for herself. Which suited Maggie fine. She liked the inviolable peace of the yoga classes, understrung by music from the dance rehearsal next door, figuring out how to get both into and out of her head simultaneously, and that was easier in a room full of strangers.)

All this put together meant it was one of those rare weeks Maggie actually felt ready for. Before the start of rounds on Monday, she gathered her interns in a circle and measured them up. Eve wasn’t quivering. Mike kept his trap shut. The others, armed with clipboards and well-chewed pens, looked ready for battle. Except Kara, who was missing.

Not like her, but even a Danvers sister must catch a cold once in a while. Not Maggie’s priority.

‘What are we going to have this week?’ she asked the interns.

‘No tears!’ said Eve.

From the back of the group: ‘No killing any patients.’

Quiet as always. Maggie shooed the interns off and accepted a mug from Alex. (“Nobody Knows I’m Gay.”) Black, no sugar, scorching hot. She blew on it while Alex asked, ‘Kara not here?’

‘Haven’t seen her.’

Alex mm-hm’d. ‘You want her doughnut?’

‘No thanks.’ She asked Alex about the weekend, and Alex answered with half a doughnut in her mouth, launching into the story of her Sunday-night date (the short version was “owned four cats”).

Maggie never heard the end of the long version. Halfway through, they were interrupted by footsteps pounding towards them, and a shout of, ‘Alex! Alex!’

‘Kara, calm down – what is it?’

‘It’s J’onn, he collapsed, down in surgery, Alex, his _heart –_ ’

‘Kara, it’s okay,’ said Alex, which it clearly wasn’t. Glanced at Maggie. ‘I need to go.’ She downed the dregs of her tea and raced away, leaving Maggie with Kara, who was gripping the desk fit to break it. Maggie tapped her knuckles and she eased away.

‘What were you doing in surgery?’

‘I was helping M’gann –’ She bit back the rest of her words, and shook her head mutely.

Maggie didn’t press. ‘Okay, so M’gann’s down there? That’s good. What exactly do you mean, collapsed?’

‘He fainted, I think. It was –’ Her hands fluttered. ‘Fast. By the time he hit the ground he was conscious, he says, and he was talking afterwards, but dizzy.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And his heart, Dr Sawyer, his heart was racing like anything.’

Oh, god. She obviously needed a hug, and Alex wasn’t here. Maggie put her hands on Kara’s shoulders. ‘Hey. It might be nothing. You know how Dr J’onzz overworks himself.’

‘What if it’s back?’

Maggie closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know. We don’t know that yet. Go and – go and join rounds, okay? We’ll figure it out.’

She managed to catch Dr Grant’s eye before Kara could get shouted up for arriving ten minutes tardy; once she’d heard the story, Dr Grant looked fit to drop rounds herself, until she noticed with M’gann downstairs there was nobody around to cover for her.

_News?_

She didn’t hear back. M’gann returned about half an hour later and gave Maggie the run-down on Dr J’onzz’s condition. It was nothing she’d wanted to hear. He had a resting heart rate well over a hundred – fluctuating – and was suffering from joint stiffness about a thousand years too young for a Martian. He’d been claiming to feel fine, pointlessly, and convincing nobody in the vicinity but particularly M’gann, who knew he felt woozy, and his thoughts were sluggish, which was how the others – when they’d consented to mind-reading – had presented before.

‘I have to – I have to see if I can – I feel like I almost…’ M’gann hesitated. ‘Can you hold down the fort here?’

‘Sure,’ said Maggie.

‘I have to see if I can get to the bottom of this thing.’

Maggie smiled as reassuringly as she knew how. She wasn’t close to Dr J’onzz, but – close enough. ‘Go on,’ she said.

There was no sign of Alex all morning (a brief message, eventually: _Nothing good_ ); but they received another, unwelcome visitor not long before lunch, strolling in like a column of relaxed darkness. Maggie eyed her up, searching for – _something –_ but Luthor looked as composed as always. Anyone would have thought she wasn’t worried about one of her senior surgeons falling seriously ill. Just what they needed. Dr Grant’s hands tightened around her mug.

‘Dr Luthor. How kind of you to grace us with your presence. Did you enjoy your holiday?’

‘It was quite refreshing.’

‘Bahamas, wasn’t it? I notice you don’t have a tan. But vampires don’t tan, do they?’

‘Oh, Catherine. Is that the best you can do?’ said Lillian Luthor, towering over Dr Grant, who might have been a child next to her and showed no intention of backing down. ‘I suppose you must have your entertainment.’

‘It is entertaining.’

Luthor sniffed. ‘I’m here to let you know about some proposed changes to the constitution of the board. Crane and Marsdin will be departing. Their replacements are still under discussion.’

Dr Grant took the news with remarkable composure. ‘Is that so.’

Luthor didn’t bother to answer. Her eyes roved across the ICU. ‘I hear the interns are all coming along nicely,’ she said. The interns in question huddled, wary, at a safe distance. Lillian Luthor smiled, like a shark. ‘Not so fresh-faced now, are you? And it seems Cat has been telling you stories about me.’

‘Nothing but the truth, Lillian.’

Maggie _could_ do everything by herself, but without M’gann to fall back on for either advice or an extra pair of hands it was exhausting. She sniped at Winn, apologised, laughed bitterly when he threw his hands up and asked if she’d been spending too much time with Dr Danvers. ‘No, she’d have smacked you over the head. Winn, just – not today.’ He trotted after her to the next patient’s bed, and she left him to read vitals while she scanned the chart.

‘Um. Dr Sawyer. You might wanna take a look at this…’

Another one. Another one with joint pain, with a stuttering heartbeat, sent up to them from geriatrics. A Starhavenite. Maggie told him flat out. ‘I’m afraid you’ve caught a hospital infection.’

‘Is it serious?’

‘Yes. It –’ There were limits to brutal honesty. ‘On top of your pre-existing conditions, there is a chance it will prove terminal. We’ll do everything we can to help –’

‘Everything you can,’ snarled the patient. Maggie instinctively stepped back. He was old, and overflowing with medical problems, but Starhavenites were known for their impressive strength. ‘I’m sure you fucking will. Can’t get a proper breakfast round here but I’m sure you can save my fucking life.’

‘Your life is a higher priority to us than your breakfast,’ Maggie retorted. (Not to mention, a Starhavenite’s idea of a “proper” breakfast included invertebrates.) She didn’t let him know he had a point. That the reason they weren’t hooking him up to a permanent monitor was because his species’ electrical field tended to mess with ECGs, if it didn’t short out all nearby equipment, and they’d never obtained or built a substitute though both Alex and Winn argued it would be simple enough, with the right materials. That some of his human counterparts ate lobster.

Dappled light streamed in through the ICU’s high windows. The space arced away from them in some zen or feng shui or psychotherapy-approved arrangement. Maggie knew how much those wooden panels had cost, the smart new floors – the architect’s consulting fee alone would have bought them ten Starhavenite-worthy ECGs. The off-worlders knew it, too. They knew how much their lives were worth to the hospital, poorly insured, hard to treat, half-despised. But they still came: for M’gann, for Dr J’onzz, for Dr Grant’s protection.

They came with broken bones and gill problems and they died.

She marked him down for constant surveillance. She’d be back in ten minutes. Back in fifteen. There was nothing they could do and they would do what they could.

 

*

When she got the chance, immediately after lunch, Maggie visited Dr J’onzz. She’d only been in his office a handful of times: it was smaller and less carefully decorated than Dr Grant’s, but neater than M’gann’s, which Maggie didn’t think she spent much time in. Dr J’onzz, on the other hand, could often be found down here, and was known for his open-door policy.

Today he’d unofficially isolated himself. It didn’t apply to Maggie, since if they were certain of one thing, it was that no human had been infected by the bug; after a minute Dr J’onzz admitted it didn’t apply to many people at all, except Mike, who had come to tell Dr J’onzz he’d better hurry up and organise his funeral or he’d miss the party.

‘I did wonder if Mike was an off-worlder, though I never knew where…’

‘He’s a Daxamite.’

Ah. Daxam had been destroyed some decades ago, swept up in the desolation of the planet Krypton. Where Krypton had had no survivors, a good number of Daxamites had made it out, or escaped by dint of being off-world at the time. That meant Mike was a refugee. It didn’t make him any less of a pain. ‘Surprisingly considerate of him, though. I think.’

Dr J’onzz chuckled. ‘In his culture it would be sound advice. He was trying to impress Dr Danvers. Your Dr Danvers, that is.’

Maggie took a second to realise he meant Kara, who was “hers” in a recognisable fashion, and not Alex, who was – her own. ‘Funny. She thinks he’s an idiot.’

‘Yes. He did just tell me to prepare for my own funeral.’

They chatted. Though he’d been confined to his own office and his elbows were starting to stiffen up, Dr J’onzz insisted it wasn’t that bad. ‘I feel fine, Dr Sawyer,’ he said. ‘Not to mention I’ve got all and sundry fussing over me. Dr Danvers in particular.’

‘Alex or Kara?’

‘Alex, of course.’

Of course. Maggie wondered what exactly Alex _fussing_ looked like. Forceful, was her guess.

‘M’gann – Dr M’orzz, I mean – might like a hand, if you can spare the time,’ said Dr J’onzz.

‘Oh, you’re convinced there’s something going around now, are you?’

‘I might be willing to consider it,’ said Dr J’onzz.

Maggie located M’gann up in the break room. She had files spread out over the main table (and stacked on the floor, along with both her own books and the remains of the interns’ reading list), and had roped James in to help her analyse patterns. The only obvious _patterns_ they’d come up with so far were that the patients who fell ill had all been in the hospital a number of days, and that different species reacted differently to this thing. Groundbreaking.

A number of the victims had been in surgery, but not all. Half the hospital’s equipment had been checked – but nothing had shown up – and scrubbed down – which they’d thought might have stopped it, until it came back. Did it primarily affect those whose immune systems were already compromised? Spanish flu aside, that covered almost every illness or ailment on the planet. And Dr J’onzz had been healthy. Hell, given how much more stamina Martians had than humans, he wasn’t even overworked.

So now it was not only back, after they hadn’t seen it for three weeks, after they’d thought it was over, and if Dr J’onzz was any indication it was getting worse. Nobody doubted M’gann’s diagnosis. He had the classic suite of symptoms: fever, drowsiness – Maggie had noticed that, talking to him – the racing heart and falling blood pressure; the joint stiffness.

Not all their patients had shown up with all of those. Some had complained of other issues. But they’d all – that was pattern number three – they’d all ended up dead.

‘Maybe it attacks the heart.’

‘Yes, but one of the victims was a Gevanite. Gevanites are shape-shifters,’ said M’gann, sketching out a quick diagram and passing it to James. Maggie peered over his shoulder. ‘Not like Martians. We can manipulate our physical form. Gevanites are more… illusionists. And in the Gevanite’s true form, they don’t _have_ hearts.’

Sometimes Maggie wished she’d gone into dermatology. This was going to give her a headache. ‘So what were we seeing when we measured their pulse?’

M’gann raised a finger. ‘I’m… not sure.’

Attacks the heart. Yes – the first victim had been Mr Fisher, their Coluvian, double-hearted. The day the interns arrived. That had to be a coincidence; what could it possibly have to do with the interns? Unless, what, it was a Daxamite ailment and Mike was some kind of typhoid Mary? He’d have said so himself if it was a possibility. Maggie was reasonably confident he wasn’t _that_ much of an idiot – and he hadn’t been near half the patients who came down sick, anyway.

Had it been that long ago? That recently, that her interns were all brand-new? She remembered the circle of them staring down at her.

‘You told them to…’ said M’gann.

‘Dr M’orzz!’

M’gann clamped her mouth shut and wiped the dazed expression from her face. ‘I’m sorry. I forgot myself.’

Maggie took her wrist. Counted. M’gann said, ‘It’s not that, Dr Sawyer. I’m just very tired.’ Her pulse beat steadily. Maggie wiped her brow and tried not to think of it. Tired. She understood that M’gann might struggle to maintain control, given the stress, but that didn’t mean she wanted to sit here knowing her attending might wander into her head. And they were getting nowhere.

‘Keep an eye on her,’ she said to James.

The day seemed to stretch out to eternity. The Starhavenite continued to decline, and two others fell sick before the end of the evening – before the end of Maggie’s evening, that was, which lasted long beyond the end of her shift, grabbing gratefully at the coffee Kara Danvers offered her. There was no sign of Alex. With Dr J’onzz out for the count, she’d have twice the usual amount of work and big shoes to fill. Alex was very, very good at what she did, but she wasn’t three hundred years of experience good.

Maggie sent her odd messages through the day. There was no indication Alex had read them.

Long after dark, Nurse Vasquez pointedly stepped into Maggie’s path and reeled off the effects of sleep deprivation at her. She was right. Maggie was so exhausted, she was barely in a fit state to ride home. As she revved away from the hospital, she wondered who she’d come back to in the morning.

*

Maggie didn’t often find M’gann in the break room this early in the day. Dr M’orzz, to the awe of half the hospital, rarely drank coffee. This morning she not only had a mug but was, when Maggie arrived, breaking caffeine pills into it.

‘Have you slept?’

‘No,’ said M’gann. She indicated the pile of paper on the break room desk. Maggie leaned against the door, wondering if she could give her own supervisor a sick note and somehow force M’gann to lie down. She hadn’t slept either, not really, but she’d at least gone home and tried to.

Their pagers blared almost simultaneously.

(But not quite simultaneously, so the two shrill cries were just slightly out of synch, and drilled more jarringly into Maggie’s head than they would have usually. And she hadn’t finished making her coffee.)

‘I’ll take it,’ said Maggie, because if M’gann hadn’t slept – Martian robusticity or not – Maggie barely trusted her to make it there safely, never mind treat a patient. Maggie took the stairs, more reliable than the lift, two at a time down the three flights.

The healthy nephew of a patient had crumpled without warning in the foyer. Nurses already buzzed around him, and had helped him reach a secure seat out of the way from everyone else. Maggie checked his temperature and heart rate. His pulse was fast, jumpy.

‘Your planet is always too hot but it is particularly hot today,’ he complained. ‘Can you put the air conditioning on?’

It was on. Outside the tarmac might be melting off the roads, but in here it was pleasantly cool – in fact, when Maggie got in the way of the fan they’d seated him beside, unpleasantly cool.

She asked him about his joints.

Dr Grant arrived, and began calling for staff to get him onto the ward. Lillian Luthor – summoned from the deep at the first sign of trouble – showed up not far behind. ‘How many patients have presented with this sickness now?’

‘Three,’ said Dr Grant. Luthor waited. ‘Plus Dr J’onzz, plus Mr Ailes here.’

‘You meant to say “five”,’ said Luthor.

Five. They’d lost seven to this thing last time around, stretched across two weeks, and Mr Fisher before that. Five _at once._ In two days. That was – to use Kara’s favourite understatement – bad.

Lillian Luthor nodded towards the patient. ‘I’m inclined to suggest we should stop admitting aliens to the hospital. Clearly they’re bringing sickness in.’

‘Obviously. It’s a hospital,’ said Dr Grant. ‘And you will stop admitting off-worlders over my slowly-cooling corpse. With the amount of time you’ve spent trying to get it repealed, I’d think you know the Alien Integration Act as well as I do.’

Luthor hmphed.

Dr Grant continued, ‘Medical establishments will offer life-saving and emergency care to _all persons_ regardless of species or planetary origin.’

‘Very well. But I insist they be placed on their own ward to reduce any risk of infection. Full isolation.’ What risk of infection? None of the patients had been in contact with each other. If it was spreading between them, they didn’t know how. At least she hadn’t said quarantine. With no way of knowing who might have come into contact with any pathogens, they’d have needed to quarantine half the hospital; and Maggie herself would be forced off-duty, though she wasn’t sick or likely to be.

‘Fine. I’ll see to it,’ said Dr Grant.

M’gann appeared then, passing Lillian Luthor within inches on her way out. Once the Chief of Medicine had gone, she made a face. Dr Grant commented to her, while Maggie eased their new patient out of his seat – ‘An unknown infectious disease. If Lillian convinces the right people, she could do a _lot_ of damage to our work here.’

‘Is that likely?’

‘I’ve still got some of the board on-side, and the press if I need it, but we need to get to the bottom of this thing. If someone spins it the wrong way –’

‘Is that all you can think of? Spin and boards?’ said M’gann.

‘I’m thinking of all our patients, Dr M’orzz.’

M’gann tossed her head and joined Maggie at young Mr Ailes’ other side. She began to quiz him on his movements over the last couple of days. ‘So yesterday, you went to observe your aunt’s surgery, and then what?’

As the first occupant of the brand-new isolation ward, he got to choose his preferred bed. Orderlies wheeled the other three in from the ICU, where they could be treated best, to the dingy, out-of-use room selected a floor away. Someone had made an effort to keep it in useable condition but there was a patina of dust over everything and one of the lights buzzed. Sweeping skylights it was not.

Dr J’onzz arrived last, and got the worst bed. That wasn’t to say he had the worst deal overall: he was more stable than most of the others, and his condition was declining less rapidly. But declining.

The Starhavenite went spiralling, blood pressure to almost nothing, heart hammering, and they managed to pull him back – whatever it was about the Starhavenite electrical system that messed with their technology maybe also meant, when they defibrillated, he responded where others hadn’t – but only the first time. Twenty minutes later they lost him, and though they’d pulled the curtains across the others could hear, they could see more than they were meant to – which was often true in the ICU, too, but different when the patient with kidney failure caught glimpses of furore over the one with liver disease. Different when one of the patients was Dr J’onzz, and he could see everything since, as he said, their racing minds here were too loud to shut out.

M’gann said, they weren’t. That was only him.

Maggie didn’t get to stop, didn’t get to sit down, for an hour after that. She had her ordinary patients in the ICU to see to, checking each one of the off-worlders repeatedly for symptoms James reassured her he was already monitoring. With M’gann dividing her time between the isolation patients and frantic research, Maggie had to deal with the ordinary stuff by herself until – finally – Dr Grant showed up. She snapped at the interns like she’d just been in an argument. Maggie didn’t dare ask. Dr Grant didn’t know enough about off-worlders, not really, but she knew something; and Maggie hadn’t stopped moving since she arrived this morning, half an hour before the start of her shift proper, on little sleep and less hope. She needed a _rest._

Dr Grant took one look and told her to go.

*

‘Hi.’

She wasn’t the only one who’d thought to crash in here. Alex leaned against the post of the upper bunk, staring at the wastebasket. She barely moved when Maggie came in, closing the door so they were in twilight.

‘Do you mind?’

‘No.’

Maggie sat down next to her, at a safe six inches’ distance. The worn, cheap sheets shifted under her hands. She’d hardly seen Alex since they got the news. They’d both been swamped with work in their separate parts of the hospital. ‘You all right?’

‘Thinking.’

‘Careful. You’ll hurt yourself.’

Alex sat up, swivelling towards Maggie. ‘I feel like I should have noticed something was wrong sooner.’

‘When? Back when you saw him on Friday? When you said good morning? _He_ didn’t know he was ill until he fell over.’

‘I know that, Maggie.’ Alex stabbed a finger into the mattress. ‘That’s what I’m thinking about. That I _know_ all that and I can’t stop _feeling_ it and worrying and it doesn’t help but I can’t – I won’t let him die.’

She said this so confidently, Maggie almost believed it might be possible: that she could hold Dr J’onzz away from death with sheer force of will. ‘I know you won’t,’ she said. ‘He won’t, either, if he can help it, and he’s tough as old boots.’

She smiled softly. Alex managed half of one back, and relaxed when Maggie pulled her in for a hug, hands kneading soothing circles across her shoulders, her own still curled into tense fists. ‘It’s okay. It’ll be okay. We’ll figure this out.’ Reassuring nonsense, and Alex’s sharp breath on her cheek, not fooled, but willing to accept it –

Who kissed who? She didn’t know. Maggie might have moved, but equally Alex might have moved, shifting to bring them closer together, and perhaps it was the wrong kind of question, because the important thing was: whoever started it, the other one continued it.

It was instinct. To let Alex lift a hand to the nape of her neck; the other, cold, reaching under Maggie’s scrubs, and she shivered and kissed harder. Alex’s fingers walked up her side and round to the clasp of her bra, hesitating, until Maggie nodded. And Alex’s face cupped in her own hands like something fragile, brushing the skin of her cheek with her thumb –

Footsteps.

They jumped apart. Held each other’s eyes for a count – three, four, five – until whoever was passing receded into the distance. Alex laughed with relief.

Maggie saw suddenly, like she’d been removed from herself, where they were. Not “the overnight room”. Where. The awareness of what they’d been doing crept in like ice, glazing over the warmth of desire – _no._ It wasn’t just sex. Nothing was ever that easy.

Alex would have her, too, if Maggie let herself follow that possibility, of feeling – being – more. _Hoped you wouldn’t. Thought you might._

‘I can’t do this,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

She gestured helplessly. ‘Whatever _this_ is, I can’t, Alex, I’m sorry.’ You want this to be more than sex, more than friends, I know you do, and you have – no idea how bad an idea that is.’

‘Why?’ Maggie bit her lip. Alex gave her time to answer, then said, ‘A bad idea? What on earth does that mean? If you just didn’t want to, Maggie, I’d understand, but I don’t see any bad idea here.’

She’d got hold of Maggie’s hand. Maggie didn’t pull away. Let Alex clasp fingers around her knuckles, brushing her thumb across the back (metacarpals, hamate, capitate).

‘Tell me, Maggie. Whatever’s going on. Please, talk to me about it.’

‘I cheated on Emily.’

There was a long, long pause. Alex didn’t move. Didn’t move her hand away. Stared at Maggie, who couldn’t meet her eyes, traced the diamond pattern on the floor between her knees.

‘Why?’

‘Because she could do better than me and I didn’t know why it was taking her so long to realise it.’ Alex reached out a hand, to brush Maggie’s hair back, to touch, and stopped when Maggie shifted away. ‘So now you know. Sex is one thing. You don’t want to start anything with me.’

She snapped her bra back into place and left quickly. Alex said, ‘Maggie,’ plaintively, and Maggie squeezed her eyes shut and didn’t turn around.

*

‘If you’re not going to go home you should at least go to bed.’ How long had M’gann been awake? How long _could_ a Green Martian stay awake without starting to lose their wits? Alternatively: how long could they bear to be among so many humans, and all their pressing, crowding minds?

‘I’m fine,’ said M’gann. ‘It’s not as if I’m treating patients. Look. I’m finally making progress.’

Maggie looked. _What progress?_

‘J’onn is here,’ M’gann added.

‘He’ll still be here if you have a nap,’ said Maggie; but M’gann was her supervisor, her attending, and never going to let Maggie tell her what to do. ‘Fine. I need to go make sure Lillian Luthor doesn’t give any of the interns nightmares during rounds.’ They’d toughened up some, but not that much. Or maybe she’d play nice. M’gann nodded vaguely.

Maggie stopped halfway out the door. ‘Do _you_ know why Luthor volunteered to lead rounds today?’

‘If I could work out why Lillian Luthor does anything, I’d have a much easier life,’ said M’gann.

In the event, Maggie’s interns performed admirably. (Some of the others had a bit more trouble, and Dr Grant – trying to look like she wasn’t hovering alongside various resident supervisors – clenched her teeth at each wrong answer.) Even Eve held up, Mike behaved himself, Kara was practically showing off – Maggie was proud of them.

Maybe not Mike. But a little less annoyed than usual.

‘Dr Danvers, if you could run an errand for me,’ said Lillian Luthor, catching Kara just as she readied to join Maggie and Dr Grant. By the time Maggie finished reassuring Eve Teschmacher she’d done well, yes, really, Kara was long gone.

The work continued, relentlessly. Two more patients from geriatrics developed the now-painfully-familiar symptoms and were duly shunted up to the isolation ward, where the staff had little better to do than rearrange chairs while waiting for every drug they could think of to prove it had no effect, or wait for their patients to die.

Somehow, Maggie found fifteen minutes to snatch a late dinner in the canteen. She located a table by herself in the corner, under the obnoxiously ticking clock; set her pager on her tray, daring it to buzz; and picked at the food she’d been waiting hours for. Her feet had been so ill-used they complained more when she took the weight off. Her macaroni tasted like heart-attack-and-oregano.

She knew it was Alex who’d joined her without looking up.

‘Sometimes I think they want us as the patients,’ said Alex, inspecting her burger with suspicion. She removed an unfortunate salad leaf and claimed Maggie’s unused mayonnaise sachet to drench the bun, then put it back together. ‘You went for the macaroni, huh? That’s brave.’

‘It was the only veggie option.’ Maggie claimed the discarded salad leaf.

‘Oh.’

That was a respectable amount of macaroni. (Grease swam into the parts of the bowl she’d cleared.) Maggie pushed it away and started on the apple, hoping she’d have better luck.

‘How’s J’onn doing?’

Maggie grimaced. ‘Winn’s trying to modify an LVAD. I don’t know if it’ll work. We’re still – there’s a bit of time, before we’ll have to try and use it.’

Funny, wasn’t it, the way you started thinking of people as already dead when they were still alive. Soon-to-be. Maybe you had to, so that when they did die it wasn’t so much of a shock. And Dr J’onzz – Maggie liked him, she cared about him, but he didn’t mean half as much to her as he did to Alex or M’gann.

‘I’ll head up and see him. I’ve been in surgery for two hours. He’ll want to quiz me on how it went.’

‘Yeah.’

They ate in silence until the tension (maybe she was imagining it; but that was worse, wondering if she was the only one) began to bore at Maggie. She didn’t think Alex was staring at her but she didn’t dare check. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ she blurted out.

‘Like what?’

‘I ran out on you. Aren’t you mad?’

‘It’s a bad habit,’ said Alex, lightly. Maggie thought of Emily, her interns, Alex – if there was an Olympic event in running out on difficult situations, she’d be a gold medallist. But you could call it a bad habit.

Alex added, ‘No. I’m not mad.’

Maggie peered into her coffee, like there might be some hope of diving into its inky depths and so escaping this conversation. But she couldn’t move. You only got to run from things once.

‘I suppose we’re going to stop pretending it was just sex,’ said Alex. ‘That it ever was. Do you even know how to do that?’

Maggie tilted her coffee mug (“Nobody Knows I’m Gay”) and ripples passed across the surface. ‘No.’

‘I don’t care about the cheating,’ said Alex.

That was such a ridiculous assertion, Maggie did look up – and regretted it, because now she couldn’t look away from Alex’s eyes. ‘How the hell not?’ she said. ‘How could you possibly trust me, knowing what you do? Knowing what I’m capable of?’

‘Everyone’s capable.’

‘I should have told you earlier.’

‘Probably. But I’m glad you did at all.’ With a shrug, she added, ‘I understand about keeping secrets.’

‘What does that mean?’ said Maggie.

Alex shook her head. ‘That’s not the point. The point is, I think you know how much you screwed up. Or do you really think you’ll do it again?’

It was a terrible apple. Sour. ‘I hope not.’

‘I mean, nobody’s perfect,’ said Alex.

And it was too obvious, too easy to say, ‘Even you?’

‘Believe it or not.’

Maggie managed to laugh, and Alex laughed, and when the laughter passed it left behind something quiet and empty. Maggie felt herself acutely aware of what was held taut between them, and how easy it would be to –

Then what? How many weeks, how many months, before she messed it up, before she either hurt Alex or lost her? That would be worse, ten times over worse, than coming in each day, and taking the coffee Alex handed her, listening to her talk about her most recent date, about finding someone else – because Alex was brilliant and she would find someone, someone less broken, who could make her happy.

It would be worse. Would it be worse?

Maggie said, ‘No.’

‘Okay,’ said Alex, without surprise.

‘But can we be friends?’

‘You still think you need to ask?’

The emptiness still hung around them. Maggie grasped for a topic – coffee, motorbikes, the weather – to fill it, and steer the conversation into clearer waters. Thirteen minutes into her allotted break, her pager beeped. Then, before she’d fully processed the short message (another one), Alex’s phone buzzed.

She read something off the screen and went ashen. ‘It’s Kara,’ she said, and Maggie – taking her hand to give it a squeeze – suddenly understood.

*

‘So this is what it feels like to be ill,’ said Kara. She frowned. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘You don’t get ill?’ said Maggie, trying to focus on that, and not – not on Eve Teschmacher in near-hysterics after finding her on the floor in the break room; not in the indication from Kara’s faraway tone that the vanishing sickness was already running its course through her, fast.

‘No. Because of the yellow sun.’

Maggie tried to fit an IV line. It was like driving cotton candy into iron. The needle bent in her fingers. Kara giggled. ‘That won’t work, silly.’

‘There’s nothing from this planet that can touch her,’ said Alex, taking the needle from Maggie. She corrected herself: ‘There shouldn’t be anything from this planet that can touch her.’

Maggie had wondered for a while if Kara wasn’t quite human: she wouldn’t be the first off-worlder to try passing herself off, and she did it well. Outside the hospital or somewhere else people worked with aliens, it was unlikely anybody would have noticed. She didn’t ask the obvious question. They were in public. If Alex thought her sister’s planet of origin was relevant, she’d tell them. Maggie said instead, ‘What can we do?’

‘I don’t know. Yellow sun lamps might help, if we can get them.’ Helplessly: ‘Her heart, Sawyer…’

And Maggie didn’t have anything to say.

‘It’s all right,’ said Kara, struggling to sit up in the bed. Maggie backed away to give them space. ‘Hey. Alex. It’s all right.’

‘It is _not_.’ (Two beds over, trying to busy herself with another patient, Maggie could still hear everything.) ‘How could I let this happen?’

‘How did you _let_ it, Alex?’

‘That’s not –’ Alex threw up her hands. ‘If you don’t get better, Kara, I swear –’

‘Alex.’

From the furthest bed, by the window, their words faded to agitated murmur. Maggie glared at her patient, who was straining to listen, and resisted the urge to yank on the blood pressure band as she tightened it.

When M’gann arrived, Alex practically attacked her. ‘We can’t even treat her with the facilities we’ve got here –’

‘That’s enough, Dr Danvers,’ said M’gann. ‘I’m aware of it.’

Alex stood down. M’gann did have a talent for soothing a situation; and Alex would know she wasn’t the real target of her anger. But how did you get angry at a disease?

M’gann pulled up a chair. ‘Kara, why don’t you tell me what you did today? Did you go anywhere different? Talk to anyone unusual?’

‘I work in a _hospital_ ,’ said Kara, scornfully. ‘I talk to new people every day.’

‘Lillian Luthor,’ said Maggie. ‘Kara, where did she send you, after rounds?’

‘Oh, yeah. The morgue. To pick up some reports. I thought it was weird, but you don’t argue with Dr Luthor, do you? Unless you’re Dr Grant. She argues with her _all_ the time. It’s awesome.’

The morgue. Down across the wing from the main surgical department. Where none of their patients had been, at least _before_ they came down with the vanishing sickness. M’gann said, ‘Excuse me.’

She was gone before Alex could finish her, ‘Wait –’ Alex frowned. ‘What does she think she’ll find down there?’

Maggie didn’t voice her thoughts. It was just an idea, rolling round the edge of her mind; if she said it aloud she’d sound crazy. How much time had M’gann spent searching, deliberately, methodically, through the surgical and geriatric departments, once they’d realised all their patients had spent time in one of the two before falling ill? Maggie had asked, and M’gann herself didn’t seem to know what she was looking for: contamination or… something else.

She talked to Dr J’onzz for a while, as he pressed his fingers to his thumb one by one. He’d shifted into his Green Martian form, an easier state to sustain than the human Maggie knew him as. ‘You can’t shape-shift out of the sickness?’ she asked.

‘I’ve tried. It follows me.’ He complained of a head like fog, of fever, of achiness, but his heart rate had settled slightly.

Everyone loved Kara, and she was lousy with visitors. James arrived, at the end of his shift (end of Maggie’s, too, but she had no intention of heading home), to sit beside Kara and keep her cheered with photographs and talk of lenses and stupid jokes. Winn, who would be working late, could only manage a fly-by visit and a fist-bump as he rushed off.

Dr Grant asked Alex if she was in any danger. ‘I’m human, Dr Grant.’

‘You say that like there’s something wrong with it,’ Dr Grant said. Was she trying to disguise the fact that she’d come out of concern for one of her lowly interns? _Everyone_ loved Kara.

Then –

‘Oh my god. Kara.’

Lena Luthor – because that was what they needed right now; another Luthor – hurried into the ward as fast as her heels would let her. She did look, to her credit, genuinely concerned.

Kara waved. ‘Hi, Lena. I’d give you a hug but they won’t let me stand up.’ (Yes, because she’d fall over again if she tried. None of the others had been this out of it. Maggie, with the part of her mind determined to cling to some sense of order, added a mental tally to the symptoms list.)

Lena nodded indulgently and asked Alex, ‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘We’re not sure. Lots of aliens are –’

‘Aliens?’ Lena turned to Kara, who nodded guiltily, then scowled at Alex.

‘What? She was going to find out.’

‘You’re – oh. All right,’ said Lena. She gathered herself. Seemed to take in the presence of the other patients on the ward for the first time, and said, ‘Lots of aliens are what?’

Maggie, Alex and (less coherently) Kara explained the situation between them. Before they were halfway through Lena had sat up straight, eyes sharp. Maggie could see the wheels turning in her head. She wasn’t a doctor, though – a genius, by all accounts, but not a doctor – if M’gann couldn’t solve it, what hope did this girl have?

‘What do you mean, it “infects aliens”?’ said Lena. ‘Nothing just “infects aliens” unless… oh. Oh, I see.’

‘What?’ said Alex.

What Dr J’onzz dismissed as a conspiracy theory, what M’gann had been circling round weeks ago, what Maggie was growing more sure of by the minute –

‘Yes,’ said M’gann, from the doorway. ‘Unless it was on purpose.’

‘Dr M’orzz, you can’t be serious,’ said Dr Grant, from her seat beside Dr J’onzz, who had tried feigning sleep without success and promptly been beaten at chess. Twice.

‘As a coronary, Dr Grant. I need to show you something.’ She looked around the group. ‘Miss Luthor, I’m glad you’re here. You might be able to shed some light on the situation. And Dr Danvers. Your sister, Kara; _you_ can stay put.’

James put a hand on Kara’s shoulder, which Maggie now knew to be as much use as trying to stop a truck with tissue paper – but Kara subsided. Sulkily. Alex looked about as stricken to leave Kara behind as Kara did to be sidelined, but she caught Dr Grant’s pointed look and went.

Maggie followed. M’gann hadn’t named her, but she wasn’t much use up here, and Kara would probably prefer James’ company to hers.

M’gann led them down to the ground floor. The slope the hospital had been constructed on put the surgical department in the open air and the morgue half-underground, easier to keep cool, though they were level. M’gann pulled a mask on before leaving the elevator.

‘Do we need to…’ said Lena, gesturing.

‘No. Just me.’

Lena hovered at the back of the elevator as the others filed out. ‘You’re a –’

‘She’s an alien. You’re a Luthor,’ said Dr Grant, with more than her usual impatience. ‘Neither of you have any good reason to trust each other. But you are going to play nice or so help me I will lock both of you in quarantine. Now – hop along,’ she finished, making a shooing motion as Lena moved warily past her.

A blast of cold air greeted them when they stepped inside the morgue, where the one tech on duty watched them coolly from behind her ancient computer. In an unused room off the back of the morgue, a barrel-shaped device sat like a lost pet among the detritus of broken furniture and heaped paper. It was too small for everyone to stand inside. Maggie held the door open.

‘I think I’ve managed to deactivate it,’ said M’gann.

Lena Luthor crouched, passing her hands over the metal surface, and said in a cold, small voice, ‘Yes. It’s off now.’

‘I’d been looking and looking round surgery and geriatrics but I didn’t think to look in here. I don’t know how I missed it.’

‘I’m glad you two understand each other.’ said Dr Grant. ‘For the rest of us mere mortals – is that device doing what I think it is? It’s distributing some kind of pathogen? And where the hell did it come from?

‘A virus, it looks like,’ said M’gann.

Lena tapped a small logo emblazoned in the metal. ‘It’s LuthorCorp tech.’

Only Dr Grant greeted this statement with anything like surprise. ‘You’re sure?’

‘I designed that filter. I’m sure,’ Lena said, dully.

‘Lillian,’ said Dr Grant.

Maggie snorted. ‘Who else?’

‘I’m going to kill her,’ said Alex. She’d been quiet since they arrived. There was something flinty in her eyes, and Maggie believed her: given the chance, Alex would indeed do physical harm to Lillian Luthor. She touched Alex’s arm.

‘No, you’re not. That won’t help Kara.’ But how did knowing the cause of all this help Kara, or Dr J’onzz, or any of the others at all?

Dr Grant marched off a few metres and pulled out her phone.

‘Does this – can we use this to help them?’ said Maggie. Thinking it through: ‘We haven’t been able to isolate a virus sample from any of the patients…’

‘And now we’ve got one, we’ll be able to analyse it,’ said M’gann.

Alex identified the problem a second before Maggie. ‘That’ll take weeks. Days, at least. We don’t have that long. J’onn and Kara don’t have that long.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Am _I_ sure? I don’t do biomed, Dr M’orzz, that’s my mom’s thing. I don’t know what she’d say. But she’s still ten hours away.’ Alex and Kara’s mom – Eliza, Maggie remembered, because Kara called her that – had been at a conference in Paris when she got the news about Kara. She’d dropped everything, Alex said, but Paris was pretty far away.

‘Alex is right,’ said Lena. ‘But I might have a quicker way.’

‘What?’

‘This virus was probably developed in the LuthorCorp labs. Or at least passed through there. They’ll have all the data on it.’

‘You still have access?’ said Maggie, taken aback. Wasn’t Lena on the outs with her mom?

From three metres away, tapping her fingers on a mortuary slab, Dr Grant said, ‘Nurse Schott? I believe you have some minor skill with electronics.’

Lena nodded. ‘Mostly. I can get in the main door. Wherever they’re keeping any info might be a bit trickier.’

Maggie took the measure of this well-dressed, high-heeled girl, not a hair out of place and with her lipstick on point: she’d be suited to a gala or boardroom, but she couldn’t think of anyone less likely to pull off a break-and-enter. Break-your-ankle, more likely. ‘I’ll go with you,’ she said. ‘Danvers? You coming?’ It seemed prudent to keep Alex out of Lillian Luthor’s way, since Maggie would rather not see her with a life sentence for homicide, however justified.

‘Okay,’ said Alex.

Dr Grant said, ‘… Then you are excused. I’m going to need your assistance.’

 

*

LuthorCorp Laboratories was an unassuming building half an hour’s drive from the hospital (under the desolate conditions of the late-night roads). Maggie had seen it a couple of times in daylight: its whitewashed walls shone, and the chrome fittings were blinding. Grade-schoolers liked to trade rumours about how many floors the building boasted underground. Sometimes, when feeling generous, LuthorCorp had been known to run tours.

Now it stood grey and looming between the trees.

A woman from Lena’s staff met them when they parked catty-corner from the main doors. It must be an interesting job, as secretary to Lena Luthor: she didn’t look perturbed in the slightest at being asked to swing by the office for burglary tools and meet her boss in the business district at almost midnight. She handed Lena a handbag. ‘Thank you, Jess.’ Their first driver had already driven off.

Getting into the building was simple. Lena marched up, introduced herself, and demanded access for herself and her guests.

‘Madam Luthor didn’t say –’

‘I assure you my mother has no objection to my visiting the labs,’ Lena scoffed, breezing past him. ‘In fact, she’s the reason we’re here.’

‘I’m going to call her and check!’ he shouted after them.

Patting her handbag, Lena said, ‘He can try. He might find it a bit difficult with no cell signal.’

Inside, it looked like the entrance to a totally normal set of offices, or some other official building. Dim half-light illuminated their journey to the stairwell, from which point they travelled in the unnerving, exposed brightness of buzzing strip-lights. The labs too looked typical, albeit you could have traded half a hospital wing for some individual pieces of equipment.

They headed down into the depths. A locked door proved a temporary barrier against Maggie’s half-forgotten lockpicking skills. ‘Why so low-tech?’ Alex asked.

‘Tech can be hacked.’ Lena’s heels clicked-clacked on the metal walkway as they entered an open space, falling away, unfinished constructions rising from the gloom. ‘This is my mother’s private research space.’ She tried a door, must have decided nothing beyond it was of interest, continued on. Maggie wished she’d stop talking but she seemed determined to ramble. ‘I used to spend time here as a child. My father would bring me, before he died. Afterwards it went to Lex.’ Another door: shelves and shelves of delicate glass vials. ‘I suppose that will make it mine, once the charges stick, but until then he’s put Mother in charge. I thought she’d shut all of this down. Oh, here we go.’

This room held a bank of computers. They were very new – Maggie recognised the most recent Lord Industries design – had that been released before or after Lex Luthor’s dramatic arrest? ‘It’s a totally internal network,’ said Lena, continuing to narrate as she pulled out a pen drive and table. ‘Let’s see what we can get.’

She hacked into the system with ease and began searching through files. After a few minutes, she said, ‘Looks like they’ve still got samples. Two rooms down, you’re looking for KR-B fifty-two.’

That sounded simple enough, until they reached two-doors-down and encountered a marshalled series of shelves, taller than Maggie, stretching on for a dramatic distance. Alex kept watch by the door while Maggie hunted down the K row, headed along it, and threw up her hands upon moving from KR-A to KS-A with no sign of any “B”.

Lena arrived – moving fast – and Alex slammed the door shut behind her. A shout echoed from outside: ‘Miss Luthor!’

‘Uh, guys,’ said Alex. ‘Lena, please tell me we’re not trapped in here.’

‘We’re not, but we should move quickly,’ said Lena, stowing the pen drive. “Quickly” meant “without wasting several minutes on the unintelligible shelving system”: the research files would have to be enough. She led them out through the back of the room, dodging round a corner to avoid the attention of another pair of guards (‘they must have remembered where the landline is’) and up a flight of less-than-shiny, concrete stairs. This brought them out near the front doors, where the guard they’d spoken to on the way in stepped into their path.

‘Miss Luthor, I believe –‘

Alex punched him.

Well. She knew how to throw a punch. File under: things Maggie Sawyer was definitely not surprised to learn about Alex Danvers. Impressed, a bit, though as a doctor she really shouldn’t condone violence against people who probably hadn’t known they were signing up to work for a mad scientist when they posted the job application. But they had lives to save – and two more guards had just emerged from the stairwell behind them – and the first staggered back, clutching his nose, giving them space to make their escape.

Lena tripped trying to run, muttering about bloody heels, and Maggie grabbed her elbow to steady her, glancing behind – but nobody seemed to have followed them out of the building; and then they’d made it to the car.

Jess calmly pulled out of park and drove them off. Lena immediately began to power up her laptop, not to waste time transferring the files. In the back seat of the very comfortable, spacious black car, Maggie inspected Alex’s hand. It was hardly bruised. She poked around them anyway, watching Alex carefully for a flinch of pain, and instead got smugness. After a minute she announced Alex unharmed. Alex curled her hand back into a fist. ‘Do you always fuss, Sawyer?’

‘I do when you might have injured yourself.’

‘I know how to throw a punch.’

From in front of Maggie, Lena said, ‘Thumb out, lead with the knuckles, don’t aim for bone if you can help it.’

‘Oh, okay, I like her,’ said Maggie.

Not that she had much hope of lightening the mood. Alex shook Maggie off and checked her phone, swearing at the absence of updates. She leaned back against the headrest. ‘How long?’

‘Twenty minutes if the traffic holds,’ said Jess.

Twenty minutes. Each second of them stretched, waiting for some alarm to sound, passing in a forgotten whisper, like a little death.

*

 

By the time they returned, they’d lost their Infernian patient. Alex rushed to check on Kara, who drifted in and out of semi-lucidity. Dr J’onzz, though his condition was less worrying, continued to meander downwards. Though it was now late at night, and the rest of the hospital had cleared out, the ward formed a distressing point of bustle and brightness. Dr Grant alternated between holding vigil and taking calls in the corridor.

‘If you send someone for first thing in the morning, you won’t regret it.’ Click. ‘Thank you for waiting, Miranda, yes, where were we…’

Maggie could hardly face it. When Lena went to join M’gann, after only briefly talking to Kara (who giggled something about flying dogs), Maggie went with her: they might need an extra pair of hands, and she’d be as useful as anyone else with Eliza Danvers still mid-flight over the Atlantic.

M’gann had taken over the dermatology lab. The walls were festooned with images of various skin disorders and signed cards from satisfied patients. The lab equipment, though less cutting-edge than that Maggie had seen only an hour ago, was comfortingly well-used; or maybe it was the hospital smell Maggie found comforting. While M’gann continued work on the sample she’d started with, Lena searched through the old reports and lab notes she’d identified in relation to the virus they were dealing with; Maggie fetched, carried, and mostly watched over Lena’s shoulder to provide a second pair of eyes.

‘There, what’s that?’ said Maggie. She pointed to a different kind of file. Lena, frowning, pulled up the video.

A screech filled the air.

M’gann froze.

Lena hurriedly turned down the volume. Maggie huffed in awe. The shot was of a camera perched in a high place – a ceiling corner, perhaps – peering down into a thick-barred cage. A tall, long-limbed creature with powerful muscles taut under its pale skin and vicious claws slammed against the bars. M’gann put down her pipette and approached them.

It was an alien, but of no kind Maggie had ever seen. It didn’t strike her as belonging to a species that would produce good-humoured bureaucrats or playful children. That wasn’t fair, Maggie knew – to judge either by appearance or the behaviour of someone (some _one_ , not some _thing_ ) locked in a cage – but this was what people feared, when they said _alien_ and curdled the word on their tongues.

Lena found her voice first. ‘Do you know what that is?’ she said.

‘It’s a White Martian.’

Oh. Oh, no.

Maggie bit her lip. ‘It looks angry,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said M’gann. ‘I was.’

_Oh._

Lena pushed away from the desk. Maggie at once wanted to shout at her, and marvel at the self-control involved in not actually fleeing the room. Personally, she felt glued to the floor. M’gann was – M’gann was – Martians were _shapeshifters –_ not the victim of Mars’ great genocide but one of its perpetrators, since all White Martians had been perpetrators if they hoped to avoid slaughter themselves – raised in violence – and what about –

‘Yes, J’onn knows,’ said M’gann, quite calmly. ‘And J’onn is truly a Green Martian. I’m sorry, Maggie.’

White Martian. Maggie tried to picture it, and pushed the image away. She was still M’gann. And why would she have told them the truth? That would only mean –

Maggie swallowed. ‘What about Lillian?’

‘Who knows what Lillian Luthor knows? But I think all this makes more sense if she does, yes. If she’s figured out –‘ A gesture towards the screen. ‘– Who I am. Some kind of punishment, or revenge. I do vaguely recollect tearing up half the lab when I broke out.’

‘Right,’ said Maggie.

‘I am sorry, Maggie, for lying. I didn’t want you to see – this, to see the monster I really am.’

Maggie imagined this was what swimming through treacle might be like: everything still, and silent, and slow. But there was air. This was M’gann, who had been the second person to comfort her when she cried in her first week, after Alex Danvers; who’d shown her how to insert an IV correctly; who’d stared in incomprehension when Maggie told her she wanted to specialise in exobiology, and then, once she believed it, with shining, grateful eyes. ‘You’re not a monster.’

‘Aren’t I? Can you imagine what it’s like? To wake up, and wonder if today is the day you’ll –’

If today is the day the hollow, hungry part of you will win. ‘Yes.’

‘I can.’

Maggie barely spared a glance for Lena. She said, ‘You’ve devoted your life to saving lives. That’s not something a monster would do.’

‘Saving lives,’ said M’gann. ‘I’m here to save lives, and ten people are dead because of it.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Maggie said, sharper than she’d meant to.

Lena said, ‘Even if it was some kind of attack on you, my mother is still the one who let a lethal virus loose –‘ She stopped, staring at M’gann, then rolled her chair back up and started hurriedly sorting through the files.

‘What is it?’

‘There. Got it.’ Lena turned back to M’gann. ‘Roll up your sleeve.’

‘Why?’

‘So you can save everyone’s lives.’

 

*

M’gann told them this: so many things happened to her in that lab, she could hardly remember them all. She had, after escaping, done her best to forget those months altogether. But as Lena had ascertained: one of the experiments on M’gann had involved the same virus now circulating the hospital. The one M’gann, of all the aliens exposed, hadn’t succumbed to. Because she was immune.

They couldn’t inject Kara with the antibodies they’d hurriedly purified from M’gann’s blood. (Tempting to skip the purification altogether and deal with the immune response later, until M’gann told them the immune response in Green Martians was irreversible transformation into a White Martian, and nobody knew if that was true for other species because nobody had been stupid enough to try it.) They injected the others, sharp metal easing under skin, but even in her current state Kara was solid as stone. They placed drops on her tongue instead, and hoped it would be enough.

M’gann, who’d been awake for somewhere in the region of forty-eight hours and had now had a pint of blood drawn, wobbled into a seat by Dr J’onzz’s bed and promptly fell asleep. Dr J’onzz could just about reach out with his hand to rest it on her nearest body part, which happened to be her ankle.

Maggie brought M’gann a blanket. She took Dr J’onzz’s pulse: steady, but she’d seen patients with this thing apparently improve before. Too soon to tell. She tried not to think about – but he’d know she knew, anyway.

‘She’ll tell you about it one day, I’m sure,’ said Dr J’onzz.

Maggie wagged a finger at him. ‘I will be very happy when you have your mind-reading back under control.’

From there, they waited. An hour passed, and a second. Dr J’onzz’s heart rate remained steady. The other four patients lost their fevers. And then Kara sat up.

Alex practically leaped forward to engulf her sister in a hug.

‘Alex! Ribs!’

‘You’re not funny,’ said Alex.

‘I’m hilarious,’ Kara retorted. She grinned at James over Alex’s shoulder, then at Maggie. ‘I miss much?’

She’d been told already, but it sounded like she’d forgotten. They explained to her about the morgue, about Lillian Luthor, their break-and-enter escapade, and – the story they’d agreed upon for all but the half-dozen who couldn’t help knowing better – that they’d been able to steal antiviral medication from Luthor Labs.

Maggie took her pulse, and her temperature, and reassured herself Kara was getting better – they were _all_ getting better – and went to crash in the overnight room.

She woke to a silhouetted figure shaking her. Nurse Vasquez. ‘What’s wrong?’ said Maggie, half in a daze.

‘Nothing’s wrong, but you’ll want to see this. Dr G is going to talk to the Chief of Medicine.’

Maggie joined the crowd forming out on the front step. It was morning – when had it become morning? Golden sunlight bounced off the hospital’s front façade, sparking against the foot-high lettering of the sign. It wasn’t enough to chase away the shakiness of being woken in the middle of REM sleep. Someone handed Maggie coffee. It had milk in it. Past refusing, Maggie did her best to drink without registering the taste. She managed about half, decided that was a sufficient caffeine boost, and poured the rest into the shrubbery.

Luthor arrived in her black car. Upon emerging, she drew up to her full height, eyebrows and chin raised at the sight of the crowd. After scanning them she zeroed in on Dr Grant, who stood ahead of the rest.

‘Is something amiss, Catherine?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Dr Grant. ‘Everything is _perfect._ ’ Maggie couldn’t see the smile, but she could imagine it. ‘Though not for you.’

‘Oh?’

Dr Grant held up a tablet, beckoning Lillian Luthor close to see – and there was only a flicker of shock on the taller woman’s face, shut down with impressive control. ‘So you do recognise it? I wanted to make a grand reveal but the CSI unit has already taken it into their possession. They’re confident of pulling fingerprints. Not that it will matter, since we know the virus that killed ten aliens in this hospital came from Luthor Labs. And the security footage Mr Schott managed to restore – yes, yes, round of applause –’

There he was. Maggie tried to clap against the mug she was still holding. Winn took a bow, then James smacked him on the shoulder.

‘The security footage shows you quite clearly attending to the death-dealing pot of fun down in the morgue.’

Lillian took all this stoically. Then, with a grim smile, replied, ‘There will be no prints, I am not responsible for _poor security_ in Luthor Labs –’

Had she just looked at Maggie? Maggie tried to blend backwards into the crowd.

‘And we all know how easily video can be meddled with these days. The charges will never stick.’

‘They stuck to your son.’

If it was possible, Luthor lifted her chin even higher. She wouldn’t try to run, Maggie realised – perhaps at Dr Grant’s direction, the crowd (which included the morning lot arriving for their shift alongside last night’s skeleton crew) had arranged itself perfectly to hem the Chief of Medicine in, and her car had already driven off. Sirens rose from not far away.

‘Ah. Perfect timing,’ said Dr Grant.

And from there it was over quickly. Two officers stepped out of the first police car, spoke quietly to Lillian Luthor, handcuffed her and guided her into the car – that easy.

Dr Grant took charge as if she was owed to it; which she was. She’d be named Chief of Medicine once the dust settled and everyone knew it, most crucially herself. Maggie might have called her bearing victorious. ‘All right, the lot of you. Show’s over. If you’re here to work, get on with it. And if anyone who was involved in last night shows up for work before Monday, I will _sedate_ them. Is that clear?’

A chorus of yes-es rose from the crowd. Dr Grant marched off to talk to the reporters. Everybody else began to disperse, in weary, cheerful hubbub. Maggie fumbled at her belt for her pager. She switched it off then, for good measure, took the batteries out, and stowed the whole lot at the bottom of her bag.

She headed back up to the ward then. Dr J’onzz was back in ordinary clothes, pulling his boots on very slowly and carefully. (M’gann still slept, though now in a different curled-up position.) Another patient had been joined by a small knot of relatives. James and Kara were talking to – ah. A blonde woman who looked not much like Alex Danvers, at first sight, before resolving into a blend of impressionistic similarities – something about the jaw, the mouth, maybe the eyes.

‘Oh, Eliza, this is Maggie,’ Kara said, as she approached. ‘I mean Dr Sawyer.’

Eliza Danvers engulfed Maggie in a hug. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘Uh, sure,’ said Maggie. She hadn’t done much – not as much as M’gann and Lena and Dr Grant, and she hadn’t even punched anyone – but it seemed best to just go with it.

Eliza pulled away. ‘You’re Alex’s friend, aren’t you?’

‘Um. Yes. We’re … friends,’ said Maggie, tripping over the word, because Eliza _knew –_ she could tell – was it the way she’d said “friend”? No, it was the way she’d said “Alex’s”, like she might have stopped there.

Maggie almost hoped her pager would beep. Though she wasn’t too disappointed to remember that would be impossible until Monday.

There was no sign of Alex. The others didn’t seem concerned, so maybe she’d been and gone. James was helping Kara get back on her feet, complaining her joints were still a little stiff but otherwise hale and hearty. ‘I’m glad you’re all right,’ Maggie said to her.

‘But I missed out on all the action.’

‘What were you going to do? Pout them into submission?’

Kara did pout. ‘Hey, I’ve got skills you know.’ She yawned. ‘I’ve got some serious skills.’

‘I’m sure you do,’ said Maggie.

Eliza lifted Kara by the arm James wasn’t supporting. ‘All right, love. Let’s get you home. James, if you don’t mind…’

Maggie left them to it.

*

_Where are you?_

_Here._

Maggie stopped, on the way to the supply closet, to make some proper coffee. It was probably against some hospital by-law to drink it in there, but she’d be careful, and the rules didn’t apply today.

So she found Alex just where she’d expected to find her. Not crying.

‘Kara’s been discharged,’ Maggie said, handing her a mug (“Trust Me, I’m A Doctor”). Alex nodded without surprise. ‘Dr J’onzz _thinks_ he’s ready to go back to work. The others are doing well too. Might take a bit longer. I guess Kryptonian metabolism works both ways.’

‘When she first arrived, I – we did lots of experiments, to test out her powers, see what she was capable of.’ ( _Powers_ , thought Maggie?) ‘I thought I knew everything. I had no idea what would happen when she got sick. We were trying so hard – to keep her safe, keep her secret – I didn’t even think.’

‘Well it wasn’t the flu, was it?’ said Maggie. ‘It’s not your job to keep her safe from, like, supervillains.’

‘Yes it is.’ And Maggie couldn’t quite tell if she was kidding. Alex leaned against her then, tense with exhaustion, her cheek settling on Maggie’s shoulder. Maggie didn’t know what to do with her hand. She fidgeted for a second, then put an arm round Alex. It was only a hug. She’d have hugged a stranger right now.

‘Your mom’s here,’ she told Alex.

‘I know.’

‘You talk to her?’

Alex shook her head. Maggie rubbed her arm absently, and shifted her grip on the mug in her other hand, last tendrils of steam rising into face. Somebody moved outside – sounded like a trolley – for a moment dimming the light from under the door. She put the coffee down.

‘It’s not your fault,’ she said.

That had been either very right or very wrong. Alex started quivering. Her shoulders heaved with rapid, shaky breaths. Maggie pulled Alex’s head close, towards her, into her space, with her hand in Alex’s hair. ‘Oh, sweetie,’ she said.

Alex sniffed.

‘It’s okay. Shhh. I’m here.’ _I’m not going anywhere._

After a minute Alex’s hard breaths calmed to long, shuddering ones. She went still. ‘I know.’ Then: ‘I’m all right.’ But she didn’t try to move away – if anything shifted an inch closer. Maggie continued to rub circles at the back of Alex’s skull with her thumb (parietal, occipital).

Soon Alex would dry her eyes and get up and go do her job like the pro she was. Soon she’d be back to scaring patients, and awing interns with her unflustered confidence. But this moment, she’d allowed Maggie to see – what few people, Maggie knew, ever got to see – that she was as scared as the rest of them. Alex Danvers, who was scared of nothing. Alex, who terrified Maggie, almost as much as the thought of meaning nothing to her.

Only almost. If Alex would have her.

But conversations could wait. They had the rest of the week off. Alex grabbed a box of tissues from a low shelf and tore a couple free to press against her eyes.

‘Are you crying?’ Maggie teased. ‘You actually know how to cry?’

‘Shut up.’

She curled her fingers around Maggie’s hand. Maggie kissed her on the temple, and knew she was going to get her heart broken, and didn’t care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh… Hi. That's all folks. Really hope you liked it.
> 
> I… it's midnight, so I don't have much else to add. If you've made it all the way to the end, you might like my other stuff? And I have a writing tumblr @inisheer-writes, but I don't post anything there that's not up on AO3. (I keep meaning to, I swear.) So… yeah.
> 
> "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of fics - AUs - and shipping wars - Kudos - and commenting."


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